Tell me a story

Once upon a time, maybe in 2007 or 2008, I passed Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the streets of Manhattan during my lunch break. Back then he was just that kid from Third Rock from the Sun to me. If only I knew then that I’d become one of the biggest J.G.L. fans on the planet, maybe I would have stopped to see if he was looking for a new best friend. But it was still about a year before The Lookout turned me into a fan, and maybe two years before (500) Days of Summer graduated me into a super fan. Then from 2010 and on he’s just had a strong of movies that launched my fandom into the stratosphere. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I really enjoyed Inception, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush, and Looper. All this is to say that the following might be somewhat biased. I really like the dude and want everything he does to be a success.

For instance, if Channing Tatum, good friend of J.G.L., wrote, directed and starred in Don Jon, I might be able to review this movie more even-handedly as I don’t really have any affection for the guy, but then again it would have been a different movie, so the comparison is kind of pointless. But since we’re talking about Channing Tatum (flimsy transition executed!) do you remember when it seemed like he was poised to be Hollywood’s next romantic lead male? Think Dear John,10 Years, and The Vow. IMDB says that Dear John is “a romantic drama about a soldier who falls for a conservative college student while he’s home on leave,” and The Vow is what happens after “a car accident puts Paige in a coma, and when she wakes up with severe memory loss, her husband Leo works to win her heart again.” I haven’t seen these movies but I would hazard a guess that Tatum plays the fairy tale man that every woman has grown up desiring: strong (mentally, morally, and physically), flawed but earnest, and trying his best to let love guide his life. I could be wrong there, and if I am please tell me, however Don Jon posits that that’s the kind of pornography women watch. Men, well we watch a different kind of pornography: Porn.

Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the titular Don. He gets so many women that his friends Bobby and Danny (played by Rob Brown and Jeremy Luke respectively) have donned him Don Jon. During the opening voiceover Don is proud to tell us about this feat, but he’s even more boastful about his love of porn. We learn intimately—and I mean intimately—why he likes porn more than real puss women. His record for masturbating in one day hits the double digits, and it’s a point of pride. Another point of pride is his regimented life: he has a weekly pattern that includes church with his family, dinner with his family, the gym, the club, sex with a “random,” and of course porn. But all that starts to change when he meets Barbara Sugarman (played by Scarlett Johansson).

Well, kind of changes. Barbara is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, a total 10 by his standards, and enough to make him want to forget about all other women. Except the women in his porn. That is something completely separate from his love for Barbara. The problem arises when she catches him watching porn. See Barbara has grown up watching the Channing Tatum romantic movies, where real men are honest, strong, masculine, willing to sacrifice anything for a woman, and they don’t watch porn! So it only makes sense that she would want those same characteristics out of any man she dates, just as it makes sense Jon would want his woman to be more like the women in the videos he watches. I sense a conflict. A rather interesting one.

Then Don meets Esther, an older woman (played by Julianne Moore) who has some thoughts on his porn habits, and that just throws his life for another loop.

I watched Steve McQueen’s Shame starring Michael Fassbender earlier this year (reviewed here), and that movie addressed porn addiction from a much more depressing angle. Fassbender’s character, Brandon, was an older guy who was just as good at “smashing randoms” but was so messed up from porn that he couldn’t get an erection when he found someone he genuinely liked. His sex addiction took him down some really dark alleys, alleys Don Jon doesn’t dare venture, at least not yet. I wouldn’t claim to know enough on the subject to predict that Jon would eventually end up in Brandon’s place, but I can imagine that after a longer period of time, random sex and porn would leave him feeling rather empty.

One of the things I really liked about Don Jon is that it’s shot in a way that highlights his weekly pattern. We see him doing the same things week after week, in mostly the same ways, in mostly the same order. This means that we get to see how the introduction of Barbara and then Esther changes his patterns. However, it could also mean that the movie feels a little repetitive. I heard someone say as much as the credits rolled. The guy thought it took too long for the movie to get to its plot. I can see why he would see that. The plot progresses gradually, and it takes some time before you see his routine change, which, I understand, could make it feel like nothing is really happening. However, I was so into watching J.G.L. wear Jon’s skin and seeing Jon’s life slowly change, that I had no issue with the pacing. Plus it never felt to me like the movie was just stalling.

And it was a delight to see Levitt transform himself into the New-York-accented Jon. Jon’s body language is unlike any other character J.G.L. has played before. His body is unlike any other character J.G.L. has played before. He did some serious toning up for this movie. I think of Joseph Gordon Levitt as a svelte and dapper guy, but he leaves all that behind in this character, and I thought he did it well. I’m stressing the fact that I thought so, because Steph felt differently. She thought the muscles didn’t suit his body type and that he couldn’t quite pull of the womanizing, street-talking, alpha male character. She said Tatum would have better in this role. I’d be curious to know if other women feel the same way. All I can say is that as a guy, I was sold. But then again I am a homer for Levitt.

But J.G.L. wasn’t the only person in this movie. Let’s talk about how Scarlett Johansson also had a very good and believable transformation into Barbara. I was nervous about her accent based on the trailers, worrying it would make her into a ridiculous-sounding caricature and pull me out of the movie, but it sounded genuine to my ears and really helped bury the actor into her character.

Julianne Moore gives a startlingly real performance as the mysterious Esther. From the moment we meet her we can see she’s broken in some way, and we’re immediately intrigued. Her realness, her openness, her wisdom was a great contrast to Jon’s “mask of false bravado,” to quote the band Player, although I don’t how much of a mask it is if he’s not even aware he’s wearing one.

Tony Danza played Jon’s father, Jon. He’s a sports-loving, pig-headed, hot-tempered Italian. You can easily see how Jon Sr. led to Jon Jr. It’s a far cry from Who’s the Boss’s good-natured Tony Micelli, so it was a lot of fun just seeing Danza play this kind of character. It was also cool getting to see Brie Larson as Jon’s younger sister, Monica, even if she doesn’t have a whole lot to do with this role. This is the third movie I’ve seen Brie in this year, and I’m quick becoming a fan. She was kind of amazing in Short Term 12 and gave a good turn in The Spectacular Now.

Speaking of The Spectacular Now, both that film and Don Jon have really good opening sequences. Both feature a voiceover that explains the current situation, utilizes music and sound in a fun and cohesive way, and culminates in the title card that fills the screen as the music crescendos. I bring this up because voiceovers tend to annoy me, but I found it effective in both of these films. Maybe because their voiceovers aren’t there just to deliver plot points, like say in Oblivion. They give you character insight from the character itself, and you not only learn about the character’s backstory but what the character thinks of his own backstory. I’d be curious to see what kind of pattern emerges if I look at the opening voiceovers I like against the ones I don’t like. But I’m not going to do that now.

I will say that the only thing I wish the movie did more of was explore the difference between the romantic movies women watch and the pornos men watch. It definitely brings up the subject, but it spends more time slagging off the porn and its effects than it does the romantic movies. Then again the movie’s thesis wasn’t about the different movies men and women watch, so I understand why it wouldn’t delve too deeply there. I don’t hold that against this movie; I just thought it was a very interesting concept and I would like to see it explored in film at some other point in time.

Having seen Don Jon and enjoyed it, I now want to see the other porn-addiction-related movie in theaters now called Thanks For Sharing. It stars Mark Ruffalo as a man trying to find love while dealing with his sex addiction. I haven’t heard great things about it: mostly that it tries to play the addiction both for laughs and as a serious problem, which is its downfall. Still it would be worth it to see and compare it to Don Jon, which I should point out is Joseph Gordon Levitt’s debut writing and directing effort. I give a heap of kudos to the guy for making a solid film that says interesting things in interesting ways. I sure hope he’s proud of it cause I’m proud of him.

My Rating

Don Jon
Director/Writer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt