"Love and Other Drugs" - in theaters

This movie isn't getting as much love as I thought it would. The critics are saying that it's just "okay", and I find myself disagreeing with them. But of course, I like pretty much every movie that I see, so this isn't too big of a surprise.

The film centers around Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal), who when we first meet him is a salesman at a small electronics store. He's also banging his manager's girlfriend and when he gets caught, is chased out of the store with his pants down. Later that day, he goes over to his parents' house for dinner, where we find out that his two other siblings are wildly successful, while Jamie is an ADHD-diagnosed, med school drop out. When his younger brother, Josh (Josh Gad), suggests that Jamie become a drug rep, Jamie enrolls in a program quickly.

He's assigned to a Midwestern area, where his supervisor Bruce (Oliver Platt) tries to give him some tips on how to get doctors to use the drugs (in this case Zoloft) that they're pimping. The main guy they're trying to woo is Dr. Stan Knight (Hank Azaria), whose the big man in town. It is during one of the visits to Knight's office when Jamie first meets Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), a new patient, who is in dire need of some medication for her early onset Parkinsons (and don't worry, because this is hardly a spoiler as you find out about this in the first scene with Hathaway).

From there, the two begin to have a very physical affair, until Jamie, surprise, surprise, starts to have feelings for Maggie. It's a basic formula for a film, but when you throw in the whole disease angle, it gives a fresher feeling.

Both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway spend an extraordinary amount of time without their clothes on, which really gives them a chance to flaunt their perfect bodies in your face. But their relationship is far from perfect, so that makes us ordinary Joes feel a bit better about ourselves.

The performances were pretty good. Jake and Anne have great chemistry (and they've worked together before, which helps), but I thought that the relationship between Jamie and Josh was the most interesting. My roommate believes both of them to be sex addicts, so to add that spin on things really makes their relationship even more twisted than it should be.

So on the CWeave scale, I give this movie a 7. Not the best, but definitely not the worst. I laughed, I cried, I cringed - all the ingredients for a good cinematic experience.

"Alice in Wonderland" - in theaters

I think I'm going to add Tim Burton to the list of directors whom I don't trust directing movies based upon books that I love. So far that list only has Christopher Columbus on it, but it's a growing list, dammit.

I knew going into "Alice in Wonderland" that it wasn't going to be like the book at all. I had read enough articles about it in my Entertainment Weekly to know that. But I feel as if Tim Burton just took the characters from both "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", not to mention Lewis Carroll's poem, "The Jaberwocky", threw out the story-lines, and just came up with a plot that involved all of them.

The first major change is the fact that Alice is in her late teens/early twenties when she "returns" to "Underland" (which she mistakenly calls "Wonderland" in her first adventure there). After she falls down the rabbit hole, she finds that she must drink the potion to make her smaller, and then eat the cake to make herself bigger again. But this time, her clothes don't grow with her, and I'm pretty sure Tim Burton just wanted that poor actress to be naked and/or wearing ill-fitting costumes for the entire movie (although magically her shoes remained on her feet...). Once she finally leaves the entryway, she runs smack dab into a whole mess of characters who debate about whether or not she's the "real Alice". The rest of the plot centers around this very debate as Alice must first convince herself that she's the "real Alice".

Overall, I found the performances a bit ridiculous. Johnny Depp couldn't decide if he was English or Scottish, and didn't really come off as mad; simply weird. Helena Bonham Carter was shrill as the Red Queen, and I must agree with Entertainment Weekly when they described Anne Hathaway (who plays the White Queen) as looking like "an Italian porn star".

I also think that the title should have been different. "Alice in Wonderland" automatically makes me think of the animated Disney feature from years ago, and doesn't accurately describe the film that I just saw in theaters. It should have been titled "Alice's Return to Wonderland", as that's really what the film is about.

I saw it in regular 3D and I'm pretty glad that I didn't pay the extra for IMAX, because I would've been disappointed that I spent that much money. Even though the performances left something to be desired, if you are at all a fan of Tim Burton, then I would still go and see this film. The special effects are pretty awesome, especially in 3D.

So on the CWeave scale of 1 to 10, I rate this movie a 6.5. I probably won't own it, but I'm glad I saw it in theaters. But then again, I like Tim Burton's movies for the most part. If you're not a Burton fan, you may rate the movie lower.