LEAD CAST:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Brie
Larson, Rob Brown, Gleane Headly DIRECTOR: Joseph Gordon-Levitt PRODUCERS: Ram Bergman, Nicolas Chartier SCREENPLAY: Joseph Gordon-Levitt MUSIC: Nathan Johnson CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Kloss EDITOR: Lauren Zuckerman GENRE: Romantic comedy
DISTRIBUTOR: Relativity Media
LOCATION: USA RUNNING TIME:
90 minutes
Technical assessment: 3.5
Moral assessment: 2.5
MTRCB rating: R 16
CINEMA rating: V 18
Jon (Levitt) is an Italian American bar tender who considers himself a
modern Don Juan. Capping his
otherwise ordinary days are one night stands with any willing partner who
passes his and his buddies’ (Rob Brown, Jeremy Luc) scrutiny. On a scale of 1 to 10 they rate women they
eye in a bar; Jon goes for no less than an “8” to “10” of course. Smooth operator Jon usually gets what
he wants until he meets the love of his life Barbara Sugarman (Scarlet
Johansson), a “10” by his standards.
But this chick is hard to please it seems, and so the smitten Jon is
courts her, taking her to romantic movies and bringing her home to meet mom and
dad. Because the attraction is
mutual, they eventually make it, but when she discovers he uses porn, he asks
him to stop or else.
The character of Don Jon is really nothing new—you have encountered his
kind in the movies featuring masturbating Jewish boys, although this time the
guy is a Catholic. The acting is
the strongest technical asset of Don Jon. For example, it presents both
Gordon-Levitt and Johansson as versatile performers, convincingly filling roles
they had never done before.
Larson, Danza and Headly playing as Jon’s family members put in great
support. Moore is effective as a
low-key but crucial character in the movie. At first glance Don Jon might look like it is intended to be
a typical romantic comedy—technically backed by like snappy cinematography and
tight editing—but if the viewer steps back and takes a deeper look into the
movie, the script reveals something else.
Gordon-Levitt wearing three hats (writer, director, actor) speaks of the
intensity with which he desires to deliver Don
Jon’s message—that the habits people choose can become addictions that
distort their perceptions of reality and stand in the way of truly fulfilling
human relationships. Jon’s
addiction of self-pleasuring to porn prevents him from enjoying actual sex with
women. Barbara’s predilection for
romantic movies causes her to make unrealistic demands of the man she claims to
love. Even the sacrament of
reconciliation in the Catholic religion is presented as nothing more than a
habit for both confessee and confessor, thus it fails to effect transformation
in a person.
While Don Jon successfully
avoids becoming a sermon, the ending is too simplistic to augur a genuine
change for Jon. He claims he is
truly in love now, as the woman seems to nudge him in the right direction, but
triumph celebrated too soon could also mean he and his partner have merely
found a new and convenient habit that will prove incapable of unseating
addictions in due time. A
superficial viewing of Don Jon will
not reveal its call to challenge our ways of entertaining or improving
ourselves. It has to be examined
minutely, or it will go down the viewer’s consciousness as another enabling
romcom in support of the status quo.
