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Not long into the film, Randall is fired from the electronics store for having sex with a female co-worker in the back room. Reidy’s dropping out of the military simply because it did not suit him is an interesting parallel here. Whereas Reidy is merely lazy, Randall is a womanizer. Reidy casually shuffles through the book, carrying something of a bemused narrative with him. There isn’t much driving the book from one seen to the next. By contrast, Randall’s sex drive (later seen as a desire for a real and meaningful human connection) drives a much more emotionally compelling story.

Rather than being exposed to the possibility of working for Pfizer through military connections, Randall is exposed to the career through his brother (Josh Gad), who runs an IT company that services the health care industry. A man with wealth beyond his comprehension, Randall’s brother is easily the most interesting character in the film - a bit of a distraction as he is completely fabricated for the film as comic relief.

As Jamie settles-into his job (and job training) with Pfizer, the film starts to resemble the book’s format a bit more closely. Randall goes through the motions of training at a job that Reidy describes in a great degree of detail throughout much of the book. The major difference here is that Randall’s family has a background in the medical field, so he takes to the medical end of pharmacology training exceptionally well. It takes a little while for his natural sales instincts to fit into the mold of the pharmaceutical rep - a portion of the film that makes an interesting parallel with much of the book. Not long after Randall has acclimated himself to the life of a drug rep, the film branches out into completely different territory and spends much of the rest of the story there.

First off, rather than fumbling through life as a drug rep as Reidy did, Randall doesn’t take long to adapt to the job and quickly finds himself excelling in the position. With the sales end of the story mastered, the film wastes little time going into much detail about the job. It seems far more determined to veer off in the direction of a romantic comedy/drama. Randall is trying to obtain the business of a particularly influential doctor (Hank Azaria) and thanks to money from Pfizer, Randall is allowed to shadow the doctor on an average day posing as a student (not an unheard of practice, according to Reidy). On rounds with the doctor, Reidy runs into a young woman suffering from Parkinson’s disease, (Anne Hathaway). From there, the film is a romantic comedy with some very touching dramatic moments only occasionally peppered with bits found in Hard Sell. To its credit, the romance in Love and Other Drugs is far more intelligent and thoughtful than most of that found in romantic movies. This is romance between intellectuals that doesn’t at all shy away from sophisticated subtlety. But it’s not terribly original. All of the romance here is drawn straight from the Hollywood romance style book. It's pretty dull in spite of decent performances by Hathaway and Gyllenhaal.

The Verdict

Jamie Reidy’s Hard Sell is an interesting look at the pharmaceutical sales industry that suffers from the slacker narrative of its author. Not particularly interested relating a coherent narrative, Reidy is satisfied to simply present a series of eye-opening stories in an order that is more or less chronological. It’s interesting and breezy. It’s not terribly fun to read, however, and manages to entertain through sheer brevity. As a film inspired by the book, Love and Other Drugs loses sight of the more interesting aspects of Reidy’s story in the interest of telling a traditional romantic drama that wasn’t really there to begin with. And while it is a particularly nice romance, it lacks the novel interest that makes the book as interesting as it is in the first place. Neither film nor book are terribly satisfying as the book leans too heavily on the sheer impact of the details of the story and the film veers too far away from those details to be anything other than a traditional Hollywood romance.

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