DON JON Review

DON JON Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Honesty is the best policy.  When I say honesty you probably think not keeping secrets from people.  While that definition is correct and important it could also mean being honest with yourself.  It’s probably hard to admit it but you are not perfect and you do not give yourself everything you need emotionally and mentally.  You probably even give yourself things you don’t need. In the new movie Don Jon, written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the characters and themes of the film do just that.

      Don Jon is a film about Jon, a man who says he cares about a few things: his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, oh yeah and his porn.  He meets this girl named Barbra, played by Scarlet Johansson, who he starts dating.  He loves her, his family loves her and everything goes well for a while.  She eventually catches him watching his porn and they break up.

     The relationship with Jon and Barbra is handled really well.  During the time they get to know each other, it is treated like a real relationship that eventually goes sour.  At the beginning he likes her.  She meets his family and they like her.  We the audience like her as well.  As the film goes on they have a few ups and downs that are very subtle like Jon going to a romantic movie with her, which is the biggest laugh in the film, even though he does not care for them.  He even says in the voice over that he doesn’t like them, but it seems he is just going because it is what she wants.  You can later figure out that he was probably dragged to the film.  Then we see their first fight in which she does not want him to do his own cleaning even though he says he likes it.  It is not treated like a big moment that will destroy their relationship, but a small moment leading towards the slow burn to the end of their love for each other.  When she finds out he watches porn he lies and says it was a video that his friend sent him and he hasn’t done that in a long time.  Then she catches him a second time and that is the final straw for her.  The rest of the film is Jon dealing with the break up and getting back to living life.

     He learns several things about himself about all the things he loves.  He also admits to his porn addiction which no one is questioning throughout the film, mostly because no one knows, except a woman named Esther, with a great performance by Julianne Moore.  She calls him out on it and helps him through it.  He learns how to be a better person being honest with himself.  He wants what the people in the porn have, great sex.  He cannot find it so he returns to the porn over and over again.  He learns that real sex is nothing like that and it is a beautiful experience between two people who care for one another.

He was even dating someone who is obsessed with romantic films where the guy sacrifices all for the woman he loves, much like in Titanic, a poster found on Barbra’s wall.  Jack sacrifices his life so that Rose can live.  That is all good but that is not what a regular “no danger” relationship should be, it should be fifty-fifty compromise, sacrificing for each other.  Neither Jon nor Barbra saw that while dating each other so the relationship crumbled.  He comes to term with the situation he is in and does his best to fix it.

     Joseph Gordon-Levitt has made one of the best written and directed films of the year.  He gets great performances by everyone; Johansson, Moore and especially by Tony Danza who plays his father.  It’s a movie that is so honest with its self that it is sometimes uncomfortable and at the same time is really funny.