Runtime: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Quick Impressions:
We’re playing catch up this week, first Cloudy 2 and now Don Jon. My husband and I have noticed over the years that Joseph Gordon-Levitt somehow does not ever make bad movies. Ever. We’ve discussed this several times. Is he exceptionally shrewd at choosing projects, or does he just have the world’s most phenomenal agent? Now that I’ve seen his directorial debut, I must conclude that his impressive filmography is more than mere good luck.
Written and directed by Gordon-Levitt, Don Jon looked promising from the preview. The theatrical trailer does a good job of setting up a timely and genuine dilemma. The conflict between Jon and his girlfriend is both a) often seen and b) hard to solve. Honestly since viewing the trailer, I’ve been dying to know, “How are they going to resolve that?” I genuinely had no idea what the second half of the movie would offer as a solution. I really wanted to find out. My husband was intrigued, too. And we could tell immediately that this is not the kind of movie we would ever get the opportunity to watch at home, so we pretty much had to see it in the theater. I’m glad we finally found a time to squeeze it in before it leaves the big screen for good.
The Good:
We were both favorably impressed with Don Jon. There’s a lot to love here. First of all, the film has the same bright, bold, crisp, energetic quality as the preview. In terms of cinematography, there’s nothing too fancy or artistically heavy handed going on, but the film is a pleasure to watch. From a strictly aesthetic point of view, it looks good. The soundtrack and score are also good (unobtrusive, yet the music creates a pervasively positive and hopeful mood even when the characters are undergoing hardships).
Honestly I think a film on this topic is overdue. It’s strangely refreshing to see a (reasonably authentic) story about porn versus romantic comedies versus reality from a male point of view. (I’m not sure why the story had to be set in New Jersey unless Gordon-Levitt wanted to lure Tony Danza into the cast by making the family extremely, excessively Jersey Italian. Maybe Gordon-Levitt has addressed this in an interview someplace. I’ll look for answers later.) Meanwhile, although the accents sometimes feel a touch overdone, the dilemmas the characters face all feel pretty real.
Even though it has some very funny moments and definitely leaves the audience with a positive feeling, Don Jon is really more of a coming of age story than romantic comedy. (I think the previews make it clear what kind of movie to expect. The only thing the previews don’t tell us is how the situation will be resolved, and that third act is pretty surprising.)
The way to realize the full comedic potential of Don Jon, though, is to contemplate that some of the people in the theater with you are there on a first or second date. Imagine how some of them must be squirming! Isn’t that kind of funny? A couple on an early date was sitting near us while we watched the movie Gravity, and based on the woman’s reactions to everything in that film, I’m pretty sure she would have stormed out and broken up with the guy if he’d made the mistake of buying tickets to Don Jon.
I’m not saying that couples shouldn’t watch this movie. (My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed it.) But it would be quite awkward to watch with someone you don’t have an open, honest, secure, basically transparent relationship with. As my husband and I chatted about the movie in the car afterwards, we realized that this is not a film to watch with a huge group of friends. Conversations afterward are bound to be painfully awkward. Masturbation is not a subject most people want to speak about in front of…well, in front of anyone (especially in mixed company).
But I applaud Joseph Gordon-Levitt for making the film. I truly think it’s timely, relevant, and thought provoking, mainly because it seems so honest. Ordinarily if we get a movie about porn addiction, we get it from a very stereotypically female point of view. Porn addicts in movies are often presented as weird, sleazy, sick (or pathetic) types who are devious in other ways as well and deserve to be avoided or dumped. Occasionally, we do get a more (again stereotypically) male-oriented presentation of sex addiction. But guy-centered movies about sex addiction tend to be either over-the-top depressing (like Leaving Las Vegas with sex addition swapped in for alcoholism) or deliberately crude for comedic purposes.
This is just a true story about a young man trying to grow up and find a meaningful relationship (and a functional life). Like many (probably the majority) of young men today, he’s been inundated with pornography from a very young age. (Even the most well-meaning, vigilant parents are not going to be able to insulate their teenagers from the nearly omnipresent tidal wave of titillating images being thrust upon them. The internet is full of porn, and—as Don Jon shows us—even network television is flooded with commercials that use sex to sell any product, however unlikely.
(My own family is fond of a girl we call “Whip Lips” who ostensibly sells a fast food burger with onion rings on it, but clearly actually sells the world, the flesh, and the devil. Also onion rings.)
Even teenagers not looking for porn are probably going to find some (and how many are actively not looking? Surely more are passively looking than are actively not looking).
Wisely, the film doesn’t even attempt to tackle some of the thorniest problems with pornography (i.e., the potential exploitation of women, human trafficking, lack of safety leading to disease, etc.) This movie isn’t about the potential evils of the porn industry. It’s about the effect of excessive pornography consumption on one man’s real life.
As the key part of Jon’s fantasy life, pornography offers him something that his everyday reality does not. Porn is the only thing that gives him true release, the one thing that really makes him happy. The thing is, he’s not happy, not anymore.
I think it’s great that the movie is addressing this head on because it’s a topic that never gets talked about in a serious yet casual way. The kind of stuff we see in the movie is just part of everyday life for so many people, yet for others, it’s unfamiliar (and sometimes shocking or even disturbing).
(It’s tempting to say that for the average male, this film covers familiar territory, while for the female it ventures into unseen areas, but that’s definitely an untrue generalization. I do think that the difference between men’s fantasy lives/view of reality and women’s as presented in the movie is broadly true, though. There are going to be some women who identify more with Jon, and some men who are much more like Barbara, of course, but this movie has a very classic “battle of the sexes” quality to it, kind of like a present day Adam’s Rib, only focused on a very different part of the body. I have a feeling Katharine Hepburn would not approve.)
Some women (maybe even some men) may have a negative visceral reaction when they see a guy repeatedly clicking through a porn montage and then throwing a used tissue into his wastebasket. Think how men might react to a film featuring repeated scenes of pad and tampon disposal accompanied by extended narration about heavy flow. (I’m not trying to say that menstruation is the female equivalent of masturbation or anything stupid like that. I’m just pointing out that what is simple routine to one person may be something obscene, never seen, and upsetting for someone else.)
There’s something very refreshing about talking about something like this (a legitimate issue/huge part of life for many people) so openly and in such a relaxed, natural way. So Don Jon gets points from me for being about a relevant, timely topic rarely discussed in mainstream film.
The movie is also well written. The way its structure reflects its content is extremely compelling. For what seems like an eternity, everything is given to us in short cuts, highly repetitive, a rigid, regular routine. Then suddenly in the final act everything changes and becomes flowing, organic, confusing, natural, more like actual life than like the regularity of a well-oiled machine. That’s quite well done.
The assembled cast is also fantastic, and Gordon-Levitt gets pretty universally great performances out of them, impressive for a first time director.
The Performances:
Scarlett Johansson never used to do as much for me as she seemed to do for other people (maybe because I never introduced her to my mother), but she’s steadily risen in my estimation over the past decade, and now I think she’s wonderful. She’s become a great actress, and she gives a pretty powerhouse performance here. (The thing is, the performance is better than it has to be. She takes it to a level that isn’t necessary. Less would have been perfectly serviceable, but she gives more.) As an added bonus, with the Jersey accent, she sounds almost exactly like she did in the SNL parody trailer for Unstoppable. (“That’s the Chrysler Building!”) Never fails to bring a smile to my face!
Julianne Moore is also very good (as usual), playing perhaps the most compelling and enigmatic character in the script.
Glenne Headly (who I always think of as Tess Trueheart from Dick Tracy) makes Jon’s mother seem so sweet, quirky, and charming that you want to go over to her house with a bottle of wine and see if she’ll serve you a plate of that delicious spaghetti.
Playing Jon’s amusingly phone-addicted sister, Brie Larson (whom I finally placed as the girl from 21 Jump Street after the movie had ended) gives a mostly silent comic performance but gets a great line late in the film that she delivers with gusto.
Playing Jon’s best friends, Rob Brown and Jeremy Luke are both pretty convincing in their parts. Neither of them gets much to do, but they both do a good job with what they’re given.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself is completely convincing in the leading role (although I’m still not sure why he chose to make Jon an Italian American from New Jersey. Personally, I would be nervous to write myself a leading part in the movie I’m directing and ask myself to portray a character with an ethnicity other than my own.) As far as I can tell, he pulls off the accent just fine, but I’ve never even been to New Jersey. If I were from there, I might feel differently. Accent aside, I think Jon comes across very clearly as a character, and Gordon-Levitt portrays him just as well as he wrote him.
Of course, the real casting coup here is getting Tony Danza to play Jon’s father. I’ve heard (repeatedly from various sources) that Tony Danza used to do porn before he broke into legitimate acting. I’ve also heard that these stories about Danza’s past are complete fabrications. What’s the true story here? I have no idea. What’s important is that while scouring the internet for the truth, I’ve learned tons of scary new sex tips bound to terrify my husband. No, actually, what’s really important is that surely I’m not the only one who’s heard all those Tony Danza porn rumors, so casting Danza in a movie about porn addiction is genius. The best part is, he gives a killer performance, stealing every scene he’s in and hopefully convincing the world that Tony Danza needs to work more. (I was going to end this paragraph with a Who’s the Boss? joke, but perusing Urban Dictionary has convinced me to keep my mouth shut and leave well enough alone.)
Oh yeah, and Channing Tatum and Anne Hathaway look like they’re having so much fun filming their cameo. I’m starting to think that Tatum is better in cameos than actual roles.
Best Scene:
When Barbara first catches Jon “reading e-mail,” her reaction is incredible. Scarlett Johansson is better than I ever expected here, and Gordon-Levitt matches her in intensity. She explodes. He implodes. The scene is gripping.
This moment resonated with me more than any other in the film. I love that she’s so genuinely, obviously, deeply upset. Johansson conveys her emotional state beautifully. I also love that she can’t see anything problematic about her insistence that A) He tell her the absolute truth, and B) He tell her exactly what she wants to hear with no discussion.
In that moment, I felt Jon’s pain. It’s so easy to empathize. How can he be honest when she refuses to hear the truth or discuss his feelings/point of view? How can he tell her the truth when the immediate consequences will be devastating?
Johansson is just incredible here. Barbara’s reaction seems so over-the-top but thanks to great acting from Johansson, it also feels real. Maybe Barbara is unreasonable, certainly she’s controlling, and probably she’s both naïve and manipulative, but her shock is genuine and her sense of betrayal is real and deeply felt.
Gordon-Levitt plays the moment very well, too. The pain and panic in his eyes as he scrambles to think of a suitable response come across so poignantly.
Best Scene Visually:
I love the visual (and spoken) repetition of the scenes that comprise Jon’s basic routine. He’s very honest about his priorities. (The things he says matter most to him clearly do.) He’s rigorously ritualistic about his life. Personally, I liked all the quick cuts—body parts, stained glass window scenes, whatever. These little slices of Jon’s life repeated again and again help situate us in his reality, the world as he sees and lives it every day.
My favorite thing to watch is the way he incorporates his penance into his work-out routines. Watching, I thought, It must be so convenient to be a young Catholic lothario. It all works out. You sin. You go to confession. You say your “Hail Mary”s while you do your curls or pull-ups. You stay in great shape, body and soul. Maybe my problem is lack of juicy enough confessions. Maybe if I sinned just a little bit more, I’d have better looking abs.
Best Action Sequence:
I like all the scenes with Jon in the car, particularly the “punching” scene and the “singing” scene.
Funniest Scene:
The first time Scarlett Johansson shows up at dinner, Glenne Headly and (especially) Tony Danza are fantastically entertaining. Probably all of the movies funniest moments, though, involve Julianne Moore playing someone refreshingly off kilter.
The bit where Jon’s disappointed by what he finds over and over again in the laundry basket is funny, too, if perhaps a bit…um…well…you’ll know what I mean when you see it.
The Negatives:
The ending is rushed. I do like what the ending doesn’t give us. But what it gives us instead feels like a bit of a fantasy, too. I mean, it’s highly convenient that someone shows up who is missing two distinct things that can be neatly rolled into one and delivered (without guilt in a mutually beneficial short-term arrangement).
I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but afterwards, I was like, “So if porn is the fantasy of immature men, and romantic comedies are the fantasy of immature women, is this ending what both men and women really want—to be Xed by Y?” I think it’s a fair question. (And if you’ve seen the movie, surely you can fill in the variables for yourself.)
Early on and then repeatedly, Don Jon makes the very clear point that society/culture has done both Jon and Barbara a disservice. He enjoys the fantasy of porn more than being with a flesh and blood woman and views real relationships through that lens. She enjoys the fantasy of the romantic comedy leading man more than being with a real man and views real relationships through that lens. The movie really hammers home the existence of these two opposing (and both limited, flawed, crippling) world views. But—even though I don’t think this is the only way to approach the issue—I believe that there’s a (potentially large) degree of truth in what Don Jon is trying to say here.
Porn isn’t real. But romantic comedies aren’t real either. I basically agree with the point the movie is making. (Obviously making porn carries way more of a risk than making romantic comedies (although Anne Hathaway certainly takes a lot of heat), but Don Jon is only concerned with the effects of viewing porn and romantic comedies, which I think are pretty commensurate.)
I am a bit disappointed, though, by the way Don Jon handles the character of Barbara. At the beginning, both Jon and Barbara are clearly immature, selfish, and (most of all) naïve (perhaps ignorant). Over the course of the movie, we get to spend a lot of time with Jon and see him begin to mature. Barbara, on the other hand, seems to become increasingly horrible and unsympathetic as the story unfolds.
I’m not sure that it was necessary to make her so awful. If we can forgive Jon for being immature, why can’t we forgive Barbara? If the story were told from her point of view, I’m quite sure it would look very different. (While I was watching the way she manipulates him early on, I thought, Yes, but you probably have to be a bit manipulative if you look like Scarlett Johansson. I mean, surely a hundred guys hit on her every ten seconds. She can’t just give them all what they want out of a misguided effort to be “nice.”) What I’m getting at is that we see that Jon is an imperfect person who is influenced by the place he comes from. Why aren’t we ever invited to consider what has made Barbara the person she is? Up close, Jon is reasonably sympathetic. With distance, he might look pretty rotten. I wish the story got a little closer to Barbara and offered some redemption for the character in the audience’s eyes.
Overall:
Don Jon held my attention for its entire ninety minute runtime. The last act is genuinely unpredictable, and first time writer/director Joseph Gordon-Levitt manages to coax terrific performances from the entire cast. Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, and Tony Danza are particular standouts. The movie asks provocative, honest questions and has a positive energy that left me feeling uplifted.
Let me be perfectly frank, though, so there’s no confusion. Joseph Gordon-Levitt spends about a fourth of his screen time in this movie narrating his own masturbation scenes as he shows us quick cuts of the porn he’s viewing on his laptop or handheld device. So if you don’t want to spend the movie marveling at his ambidextrous talents, perhaps you should see something else. Definitely leave your kids at home (where they will almost certainly be accessing alarming internet porn while you’re out at the movies for the evening). (At least that will keep them from playing hide-and-seek or tag, the two most dangerous games ever played by children as we know from recent releases Prisoners and Gravity.)