Rent Don Jon (2013)

Saturday Night Beaver - Don Jon review by JJ

An excellent sort-of remake of Saturday Night Fever updated for the era of internet porn. Although the amiable, blue collar, Italian-American lunk in the lead role has only one interest in nightclubs (pulling) rather than Travolta's two, he resembles the earlier film's mildly disaffected hero in almost every other way, from the father/son battles for dominance over Mom's pasta dinners to the dead end job ameliorated by an attitude of living for the weekend.

A detour into romance with the lovely Scarlett Johansson can't quite make give Jon give up his spankbank; he wants her but at the same time knows she isn't quite the real thing. She is just as addicted as he, only to the emotional porn of Hollywood romcom, but neither of them can articulate their feelings about their need for screen fantasy-worlds of one kind or another nor understand quite how commodified both they and their aspirations are.

It's a very Catholic film, with the old trope of redemption from the figurative prostitution of Porhub offered by the saintly, human Madonna figure of Julianne Moore who Jon meets at evening class and who is able to offer him a real spiritual connection which begins to pull him away from the empty materialism of his upbringing and which it - and Johansson - expect him to reproduce.

Great performances all round (esp. Tony Danza as Jon's lookalike & ungrownup Dad) and you'd hope for more of this class from Levitt in the future.

Zero star rating - Don Jon review by JM

I can't think of any redeeming features of this film. It is one of perhaps only two which I have either ejected half way or skipped through the last 25%. The characters are feral, vulgar slobs and painful to watch, even worse to listen to since the script is littered with f-words in every sentence. This is social un-realism taken as art.

OK, there are other films in which one does not like the characters, but here I can't even get to the first base of empathy. The plot is paper thin and predictable - and, yes, I skipped to the end part just to make sure there was no twist worth waiting for.

The mystery is that two excellent actresses should have lent their names to this trash.

There's more going on that you think - Don Jon review by AER

This deceptively simple comedy does a backflip two-thirds of the way in and gives us food for thought. For the first hour or so, this film presents Don Jon as an unsympathetic, unfunny caricature, but this slips us a sly twist that belies the keen intelligence of the screenwriter, director and actor. It's a smart film that plays dumb. It's not a rule-breaker or worth more than one watch, however, it was interesting in how it made us reassess every single one of the characters. Brie Larson's taciturn sister probably comes off worse when the film begins to evolve into something a little more thoughtful - she's left high and dry as a stupid Silent Bob-style cipher.

It's not often I begin loathing a film and end up having to rethink everything I've seen before. For a modern American comedy this is very good, uneven but good.