Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Brie Larson, Rob Brown, Jeremy Luke, Glenne Headley
Jon (Levitt) is a man of simple pleasures. His favorite things in life are his job, his place, his car, his exercise, his church, and his porn. He has a string of one night stands but none of them can measure up to the thrill and satisfaction that porn gives him. When he meets Barbara (Johansson) he claims that she’s ‘the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ but when she discovers him using porn she makes him promise to not watch it again, but he struggles with overcoming his addiction.
I was anticipating Don Jon very much because I’m a big fan of Gordon-Levitt, and was looking forward to seeing what he did when he was behind the camera. It’s pretty much billed as an anti-romcom, and I think most people will be drawn to it due to the unusual subject matter of using porn. However, it’s not about porn so much as it is about addiction and I think there are valuable lessons to be learned about dependence.
When it started I was afraid that it would glorify the misguided machismo where girls are only there to be rated on their looks and are seen as nuisances as much as they are prizes to be pursued. Sadly, the film was mired in stereotypes like these, not least of which was Jon’s family, who personified every lazy cliché of Italian families living in New Jersey that we’ve seen on film.
When Jon meets Barbara he seems to have met his match as she refrains from having sex with him so easily, and makes him work for it. This leads to some humorous moments, most notably the dry humping scene. However, later on it becomes clear that this is actually a cruel thing to do, and hints at an ugly aspect of Barbara’s character that becomes more evident as the film progresses. I did like the speech at the end, where Jon tells her that she has a completely one-sided view of things, but he wasn’t exactly blameless either.
The point I did like was how Jon defended porn’s unrealistic expectations of sex by saying that romcoms were emotional porn and gave people unrealistic expectations of romance and relationships, and there’s probably more than a grain of truth to that. I know that I’ve always been attracted to the idea of movie love, and I was reminded of a quote from Sleepless in Seattle - “You don’t want to be in love, you want to be in love in a movie.”
I didn’t like Don Jon as much as I thought I would, and I think this is because many of the characters had more unlikeable edges than I was expecting, but Gordon-Levitt shows some flair behind the camera. The script is tight and it’s amusing in places, and I think it raises some valuable points about communication and expectations in relationships. It has a different vibe about it as well, and this makes it stand out from other films.