Don Julio

Rating: 6/10 (23 December 2013)

Don Jon is a romantic comedy and as such there are a few things you more or less have to take with a grain of salt. At least to some degree it will be generic and formulaic.
In this case Don is a stereotypical alpha male, whose interests are going to the gym, his car, church and picking up girls for one night stands. And of course porn. He decides one night stands aren't equaling his porn induced fantasies and decides to get into a relationship with a girl. Instantly he becomes the polar opposite of who he was, he goes to romantic movies he hates because she likes them, he doesn't push her to have sex, goes back to school because she likes it etc. That all happens in the intro to the movie so ill leave the almost spoilers there.
Essentially he has one classic unhealthy lifestyle, trades it for what he thinks hes supposed to look for, but its disingenuous and just as unhealthy.
There's a significant amount of religious context, at first it makes sense because the character has never questioned his lifestyle. But as he metamorphosis's from alpha male jerk to sensitive boyfriend and then his ultimate personification, he starts to question the things in his life. He almost half questions his belief in Christianity, but doesn't really follow through. Maybe they ran out of time. Anyway as with all romantic comedies he eventually sees the error of his ways and finds happiness.
This film does 2 things differently. One it focuses on Pornography, which i like because its a huge part of adult life which often studios are too timid to want to tackle, and the other is it added in a sort of middle man between unhealthy lifestyle and healthy resolution. Im not entirely sure the added state of unhealthiness was necessary but who am i to judge. On the pornography note i was fairly happy throughout the majority of the film, even though factors in his personal life seek to annihilate his practice of watching pornography at various times he defends it as natural and a part of pretty much every adult males life, all of which are true. Then he goes and, as we more or less always knew he would, ditches watching it altogether which kind of sends the message that it was abhorrent. In that sense the film took a man abusing something in an unhealthy way and basically made it taboo, which is equally fallacious.
Not sure how the average viewer would watch this. The majority of romantic comedy watchers are likely to be women who might not like the frank portrayal of human sexuality and the contemporary reliance on porn for basically all men, but on the other hand i'm not too certain many men will appreciate the formulaic and ultimately obvious ending.
I will say on a positive note, it was extremely satisfying seeing Gordon-Levitt acting macho, protruding his chest constantly and flexing his arms superfluously. He reminded me, i'm sure intentionally, a great deal of Jersey Shores Mike "the situation".