K-SCORE: 40
Writer/Director: Joseph Gordon Levitt
Starring: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore
Spoiler Level: Major
Even though I didn’t really like the film Don Jon that was written, directed by, and starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, I came away with more respect for the man than I had before. The story of a gruff young macho guy addicted to porn is tough to tell and Don Jon tackles the subject with courage and in a way I’d never before seen. The grotesque and uncomfortable subject matter with gray morality isn’t fun to watch, but regardless it’s the film’s strength.
Apart from addressing this addiction though, the film doesn't do very much well. The characters are not likable, but at least aren't exclusively a weakness. The protagonist is complex, though he and his friends are the kinds of men who rate women on a scale one to ten. It's a subset of men I hold in utter contempt, albeit tragically one grounded in actuality. I credit the development of Jon away from that kind of attitude, but it's often a cheap journey, and one that doesn't save the film. Scarlett Johansson's character flips a switch at one point from a little shallow to wholly unethical. She suddenly claims Jon shouldn't clean his own floors because it's lowly servant work. So I guess he's secretly been dating a southern belle from the fifties. And Julianne Moore plays a sexually enlightened older woman whose husband and son have died in a car accident. Why do stories believe the best kinds of partners are the ones who’ve had their families die horribly? It's just like real life! Right?
The largest problem with Don Jon is that Jon never really has to struggle to overcome his addiction and weigh the pluses and minuses of watching pornography; he just has to realize his girlfriend is a nasty person and hang out with the other woman in his life. In stories, you don't root for a character to have his (or her) problems solved, but rather to fight to solve the problems himself. Like Silver Linings Playbook, this film has challenging subject matter essentially ruined by a fairy tale ending.