Don Jon

My Grade:  A-

As a fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it comes as no surprise that I have been excited about Don Jon since I first heard about it and it was tentatively titled Don Jon’s Addiction. Gordon-Levitt writes, directs, and stars in this film and I’m quite impressed. Not only is the writing supremely smart, but the film looks good, too. Sometimes when actors get behind the camera, they tend to focus more on performance because that’s what they know, but Gordon-Levitt delivers a well-rounded directorial debut with strong performances, great editing, and lots of laughs.

The protagonist, Jon Martello (Gordon-Levitt), loves a few things: his body, his pad (apartment for those of you that may not understand the term), his ride (car... duh), his family, his boys, his girls (which he gets a lot of), his church, and his porn. Yep, church and porn are right beside each other on that list. He has a nice little routine going of visiting his family, watching porn, working out, watching porn, going out and taking home a random, then watching porn in the living room while she’s in the bedroom, going to church and confessing his sins, then watching more porn. Throw in some time to clean up his place and you have a pretty good understanding of Jon’s life. Jon’s routine allows Gordon-Levitt the ability to use parallelism to show small changes in this routine for comedic and artistic purposes as well as to show growth of the character. For instance, every time Jon goes to the gym, he walks by the basketball courts and straight to the weight room to work out by himself. As the film progresses, though, and Jon gets outside of himself a little, he stops, turns, and goes to work out with others. The metaphor hits you like a ton of bricks and you get it. Then you can’t help but realize that this is a smart movie.

A kink is thrown in Jon’s routine when he comes across Barbara (Scarlett Johansson). She won’t go to bed with Jon the first night but he’s ready for the “long game” as he discusses with his buddy Bobby (a hilarious turn from the little known Rob Brown) since Barbara is “more than a dime.” She has a list of things that she wants him to do including taking a night class so he can get out of being a bar tender for a living, meeting her family, watching romantic comedies, and stop watching porn. He does everything else, but can’t stop the porn which, in true romantic comedy fashion drives them apart and we suspect they may get back together by the end... but this film mocks the conventions of the romantic comedy genre, so you’ll have to watch to find out if they actually get back together. Toss in the older, not as attractive Esther (a wonderful turn from Julianne Moore) and Jon is about to get his entire world flipped upside down.

For all the smarts Gordon-Levitt’s screenplay exhibits, it ends up confused by the end because it thinks it’s about love when it’s really about sex. It certainly explores sex in a daring, unique, honest way, but as much as the film wants to be about love, it is not. So, on that level, maybe it doesn’t take a very honest or daring look at sex because it essentially equates sex with love. Another way the film seems a bit confused because it essentially damns the watching of porn as selfish and unfulfilling, but it plasters sex scenes, nudity, and more up on the screen for the viewer which is reminiscent of... you guessed it... porn.

If you put aside the confusion this film has about its message, it is still a highly entertaining film with great acting performances, fantastic use of music (which I didn’t really delve into but it’s superb), outstanding editing, and a sharp screenplay. It proves what I’ve been saying (and many others have been saying) for years... Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the most talented people in Hollywood and we should all be looking forward to more of what he has to offer in the years to come in front of and behind the camera.