Nobody is likable

Rating: 4/10 (15 March 2014)

Just finished watching "Don Jon" on video. Immediate response is: It's hard to like any of the characters in this movie. That may be because the subject matters. There are several major issues of humanity raised in this film that may be too big for one film. I may be wrong, but I think "Don Jon" was meant to compare and contrast the difference between sex and sexuality as perceived through the filters of males and females. Complicated stuff, even without including the differences created/presented by cultural and ethnic social systems (ie, Asian, African, etc.) or environmental (species survival) issues. So, to keep it manageable, I will address "Don Jon" only vis. sexual relationships in 21st Century Northern Hemisphere, so-called "Western" culture. And I will summarize with a baseball analogy: A quality at-bat, but no better than a sacrifice fly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as writer, director and star, deserves kudos for pioneering new territory; Sexuality in the age of Internet Porn. All thinking people recognize that there has long been confusion between sex and romance; "Don Jon" is the only film I know of that has attempted to examine how the availability of on-line fantasy fulfillment will affect that confabulation. But it does so in what I regard as too shallow, too cursory, a manner. I also think "Don Jon" suffered from overly ambitious casting: I just never believed Scarlett Johansson as a manipulative, sex-as-a-tool Jersey Girl. I kept thinking she was channeling Eliza Dushku and wondering what "Don Jon" could have been... But back to (what I believe was) the point of "Don Jon": Men and Women value "sex" differently. At the risk of seeming simplistic, I think men are instinctively motivated to isolate sex from love while women instinctively understand that men don't recognize their inherent confusion. "Don Jon," to its credit, tries to illustrate this. Unfortunately, it fails in this attempt. If I am allowed, I will quote a statement attributed to Germaine Greer: "Men will swim across a river of snot if they believe there is friendly p***y on the opposite bank." This aspect of male behavior, particularly in the age of internet porn, is what I think "Don Jon" wants to examine.
Oddly, throughout the movie I kept waiting for Brie Larson's character (Monica, Jon's sister) to have an effect on the plot. She did. Brie Larson continued to play the live-action version of Jiminy Cricket she established in "The United States of Tara" and "Scott Pilgrim vs....." by being the character who "revealed" the truth the main character denied. Thank goodness she did it so effectively or "Don Jon" would have been a complete waste.
The future may regard "Don Jon" as prescient, insightful, visionary. It may deserve these descriptors. But that's for the future.