Don Jon (2013)

Film: Don Jon (2013)
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Glenne Headly, Brie Larson
Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Sex...now that I've got your attention.  We all had some wiseass in our high school or college that decided to put this on their student government posters (and they always won, proving once and for all that sex does indeed sell).  This seems to be the way that we are introduced to Don Jon.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Jon discusses the true passions in his life, and like the rest of us, they include family, home, and sex, and then he adds in his taboo guilty pleasure: porn.  While images of breast implants and Nicki Minaj-style butts fill our giant movie screen, Jon waxes on about the benefits of pornography, and how he prefers it to actual intimacy.

The thing about Don Jon is that this is hardly taboo.  With shows like Sex and the City becoming wildly popular, the "prefers porn" guy has become a regular part of the television and movie landscape.  Even in Jon's case, where he clearly is exhibiting considerable signs of sex addiction, this isn't a topic we are coming to for the first time; Steve McQueen's dangerous and sensual Shame a few years back gave a difficult to top look at what sex addiction can do to a human being.  So I was glad that after a while JGL the director (he wrote, directed, and starred in the film) decided to move away from trying to stun us with more images of naked bodies and instead brought us into the comic exasperation of Jon's life when he decides it's time to fall in love.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie's second act, with Jon wooing the goddess Barbara Sugarman (Johansson), is easily the strongest portion of the film.  The movie follows Jon, so self-confident and sexually satisfied, trying to come to terms with Barbara, clearly beautiful and a woman worth chasing, staving off his advances.  This wouldn't work if Scarlett Johansson wasn't firing on all cylinders (ScarJo hasn't been this excellent in years and years, and is well worth the price of admission).  She plays Barbara as both an unattainable deity, a supermodel as untouchable as the women in Jon's fantasies, and then as a girl who knows what she wants out of life.

Barbara, as Brie Larson in a killer moment later in the film points out (the only time in the whole movie she talks, and man does that bit payoff), is really not good for Jon.  While Jon clearly has major issues and does need to get his life in order, Barbara has a specific vision in mind for the man she wants to marry, and isn't afraid of putting down Jon in order to make him her ideal mate.  The great thing about Johansson's performance is that you find yourself justifying what she's doing because you're comparing Jon's one deviant activity to what she's asking him to change, and she's always the moral winner.  It isn't until Larson's Monica points this out that we see Barbara for what she truly is-just as obsessive, just as narcissistic, and just as addicted as Jon, but in this case it is to getting what she wants.

The film drags when she's not onscreen, giving us this complicated performance.  I know a lot of people have been enamored with Julianne Moore's work in the film, but I just don't get it.  Moore is always worth watching (she's one of the best), but I didn't see anything remotely interesting or new about this performance, except of course that she cries like a pro (but we all knew that about Juli).

Gordon-Levitt, like Moore, is very watchable, though he too suffers when he doesn't have ScarJo's Barbara to bounce off of as a scene partner (you almost get the feeling that JGL wrote the script entirely so this character would have a movie to be built around her).  Since this is JGL's first feature, you definitely can feel that energy of trying to get a vision, a personality onto the screen.  This lends to a lot of the comedy in the film (you will most definitely laugh), but he also exhibits some of the classic first-director sorts of mistakes.  He spends too much time underlining his points; for every clever bit like Larson's, there's more drilling into the audience that, say, Jon is wildly superficial.

He also needs a slightly better editor, particularly when it came to Tony Danza's performance as Jon's father.  This entire plotline, quite frankly, could have been cut.  There's no payoff in the frayed relationship between Jon and his father, and though the role felt like it was written with Danza in mind, it's been too long since he's properly acted, and the lines were showing.  Glenne Headly as Jon's mother was far better, and quite frankly, their relationship was the parental one you cared about as the film progressed.

But the film was still fun, and thanks to ScarJo's work, definitely worth a glance.  For those of you who have seen it, would you also recommend viewing the film?  What sort of movie do you hope that JGL takes on next?  And why can't we get this fun, game, perfectly-executed Scarlett every time she makes a movie?  Let us know in the comments!