An Agreeably Offbeat Directorial Debut

Rating: 7/10 (20 July 2015)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has worked as one of Hollywood's most talented young actors for years now, so it's a relief that his writing-directing debut, "Don Jon", is not a vanity project but a tender, funny romantic comedy stimulatingly unconventional. Not playing himself like Woody Allen always did in his best movies, Gordon-Levitt swaps his public easygoing appeal with the greasiness of a New Joisey guido with an addiction to porn. Such a male lead would normally be reprehensible, but Gordon-Levitt, as it turns out, is a writer who pens with a great deal of heart, turning his titular Don John into an anti-Prince Charming sympathetic instead of crude.
In "Don Jon", he is Jon Martello, a 20-ish player who only cares about, as he puts it, his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, and his porn. He sounds like the perfect candidate for a "Jersey Shore" reboot, but Jon is much more than some hulking no-brain ready to annoy the hell out of Snooki Polizzi — as a porn addict, he, despite having one-night-stands like it's his job, is unable to make an emotional, let alone physical, connection with a woman. He figures porn is better: he can lose himself in the distanced vulgarity.
When out with friends one night, he spots Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), a shapely blonde who instantaneously has him wrapped around her finger. She doesn't want to be another one of his single night flings — she wants to court, to put off sex in favor of dates, to meet each other's families, to get to know one another. Not because she's been burned before, but because she, like Jon, has an addiction: romantic comedies. She wants to be a real life Sandra Bullock, finding love in the most unexpected of places. Normally, Jon would be put off by such silliness — but Barbara is much too irresistible to let down. Problem is, his addiction is still riding strong, hindering any kind of growth in the relationship; and when he meets Esther (Julianne Moore), a damaged middle-aged woman who seems to understand him better than anyone else, things begin to get out of hand.
For being such a short movie (a mere 85 minutes), "Don Jon" feels vast, having a lot to say and packing in quite a bit of obligatory rom-com charm. But unlike most rom-coms that rely too heavily on that rom-com charm, Gordon-Levitt digs deeper, analyzing the nature of addiction and how it can affect nearly every aspect of one's life, whether it be through a romantic relationship or a familial one. He's subtle about it, never becoming a preachy artist standing on a soapbox warning about the dangers of porn. "Don Jon" is so far beyond the other additions to the genre because it makes a good case to try to understand a character; even the secondary players seem rounded, not cutout (a risk considering the over-the-top NEW JOISEY flightiness of the majority of 'em).
Gordon-Levitt gives an expectedly monumental performance, returning back to earth whenever he threatens to tread into Joey Tribbiani 2.0 territory, but the real stars of the film are the women, particularly Johansson and Moore. Johansson rarely gets the opportunity to let her comedic chops shine, but in "Don Jon" she goes all out, humorously embodying the blonde, gum-chewing, manicured, monotone Jersey girl with just enough credibility to win us over. Moore, as Jon's second love interest, is unrefined and sexy, playing a woman old enough to raise eyebrows but pushing doubts out of our judgmental windows through reasonable affinity.
"Don Jon" is a satisfying project for a major talent — Gordon-Levitt has proved himself in his acting for years, and here we finally get to witness him directing and writing like it's no big deal: it seems natural, proper. Now that we've seen what he can do with the rom-com, it's only inevitable to want to see what he does next. This is a small movie, a diamond in the rough: one can only wonder what will happen if he does something bigger.