Rent Don Jon (2013)

Zero star rating - Don Jon review by JM

I can't think of any redeeming features of this film. It is one of perhaps only two which I have either ejected half way or skipped through the last 25%. The characters are feral, vulgar slobs and painful to watch, even worse to listen to since the script is littered with f-words in every sentence. This is social un-realism taken as art.

OK, there are other films in which one does not like the characters, but here I can't even get to the first base of empathy. The plot is paper thin and predictable - and, yes, I skipped to the end part just to make sure there was no twist worth waiting for.

The mystery is that two excellent actresses should have lent their names to this trash.

Self-serving director - Don Jon review by Alain

The one major problem with this film is that the director cast himself as the lead character. This creates a severe conflict of interest where not only is he in a position where it is difficult to assess his own performance, but most importantly for a film like this one, it looks like he is just making his fantasies with Scarlett Johansson come true.

Not sure how he got Scarlett Johansson to agree to this deal, with money presumably, but her acting skills are not being used to the full effect as she only seems to serve as a sexual object.

Finally, although I understand this film is about pornography addiction (partly), it is just too graphic too often.

Saturday Night Beaver - Don Jon review by JJ

An excellent sort-of remake of Saturday Night Fever updated for the era of internet porn. Although the amiable, blue collar, Italian-American lunk in the lead role has only one interest in nightclubs (pulling) rather than Travolta's two, he resembles the earlier film's mildly disaffected hero in almost every other way, from the father/son battles for dominance over Mom's pasta dinners to the dead end job ameliorated by an attitude of living for the weekend.

A detour into romance with the lovely Scarlett Johansson can't quite make give Jon give up his spankbank; he wants her but at the same time knows she isn't quite the real thing. She is just as addicted as he, only to the emotional porn of Hollywood romcom, but neither of them can articulate their feelings about their need for screen fantasy-worlds of one kind or another nor understand quite how commodified both they and their aspirations are.

It's a very Catholic film, with the old trope of redemption from the figurative prostitution of Porhub offered by the saintly, human Madonna figure of Julianne Moore who Jon meets at evening class and who is able to offer him a real spiritual connection which begins to pull him away from the empty materialism of his upbringing and which it - and Johansson - expect him to reproduce.

Great performances all round (esp. Tony Danza as Jon's lookalike & ungrownup Dad) and you'd hope for more of this class from Levitt in the future.