Energetic, Fresh take on the 20-something relationship crowd

Rating: 7/10 (20 December 2013)

There is no doubt that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the most talented young actors in Hollywood. He has impressed me in his past roles in Brick and Inception. In this movie he portrays a twenty-something from New Jersey who grows as a person from an immature kid into a man. The movie started off very strong for the first 25-30 minutes, with Scarlett Johansson doing an admirable job as his New Jersey girlfriend. I particularly liked how the pervasiveness of sexuality in the media was shown. From the Hardy's commercial to various music videos and models on TV. The rest of Don Jon's family were also great, and I wish we could have spent more time at the dinner table with them. Julianne Moore played a much larger role than I had originally expected, and did a great job helping Jon grow as a person.
I thought the sister character constantly being on her phone aside from one line seemed a bit out of place. That kind of character is more apt to pop up in a quirky comedy. Also clocking in at an hour and 23 minutes, it was fairly short. This is positive in that I think the movie was losing steam. The negative aspect is that we don't really get to see what happens with the Jon and his new love interest. However, I could understand why that was left open-ended since Jon's addiction to pornography was the focus rather than the actual girl he ends up with. One tiny part that showed Jon's growth was when he chooses to go to the basketball courts and change his routine from just weight training. I thought that was a nice subtle way of showing how he had grown as a person that wasn't only focused on his old ways.