Entertaining but repetitive tale of NJ Guido transformed into a mensch through the love of a good woman

Rating: 6/10 (10 February 2014)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed and starred as 'Don Jon', about a New Jersey 'Guido' who is addicted to pornography. When we first meet 'Don Jon', he's hanging out with his pals at a bar, and has no trouble picking up women. There's a good deal of banter between the guys as they rate the women they see in the bar, on a scale of 1 to 10. Jon makes it clear that porn is still superior to having sex with real, live women.
Eventually, Jon hooks up with Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), who has a decided 'New Joisy' accent. She attempts to make a man of him by urging him to go to night school to get a more professional job and he indulges her tastes in romantic movies. Barbara keeps him on a leash for a while before they have sex but soon discovers his mean addiction to porn. Jon promises Barbara that he doesn't watch porn and brings her over to meet his over the top parents, who fall in love with her (the parents, are written as over-bearing Italian stereotypes). Finally, Barbara becomes aware that indeed Jon has been lying to her, after discovering that his browser history indicates that he frequents porn sites all the time. Barbara then promptly dumps Jon around the midpoint of the film.
Up until this point, the problem with Gordon-Levitt's screen writing is that there's too much repetition. We're constantly bombarded with near X-rated images illustrating Jon's addiction. There's also all those repetitious scenes where Jon is constantly at his local church's confession box, reporting his sexual escapades and porn excesses, to the local priest.
Finally, the story takes a more refreshing turn when Jon forms a relationship with Esther (Julianne Moore), a middle-aged widow, who lost her husband and son in a car crash a couple of years before. Esther turns Jon into a 'mensch' by impressing upon him that sex should be much more intimate, leading to a union of souls. Jon takes the bait and now 'Don Jon' has morphed into an updated 'Marty' (the 1955 drama starring Ernest Borgnine, who plays a working class stiff who grows to maturity through the love of a good woman).
Would the 'Guidos' of this world, end up opening themselves up to expanding their self-consciousness? In most real-life scenarios, unlikely. But here, after being bombarded with scenes of the boorish Jon 'doing his thing', it's a refreshing twist to have this clueless Guido, suddenly transformed into a sensitive guy, who relates to women as human beings. Many critics found 'Don Jon' to be one-dimensional in many places, which it is—but it also entertains to a good degree and features a neat shift in the protagonist's internal arc.