Don Jon (2013)

Just about every character in Don Jon, the directorial debut from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, can be defined by which screens they most frequently utilize in their daily lives. Some characters like going to movies, others like watching sports on their television, and one in particular spends just about the whole film on their cell phone. Then, of course, there is the titular protagonist Jon Martello, whose addiction to Internet pornography has kept him from connecting with human beings on any significant level. That is the theme of Don Jon in a nutshell: it’s about a world where people’s expectations are so altered by the entertainment surrounding them that life no longer begins to feel organic. It’s an admirable goal, and Gordon-Levitt is able to find some interesting moments within this world, but the film is hampered by a group of characters that don’t feel like people as much as a cavalcade of stereotypes. Perhaps that’s the point of what Gordon-Levitt is going for, but the result is a layer of abrasiveness that detracts from what is otherwise an impressive debut.

Gordon-Levitt casts himself as Martello, a New Jersey bartender who goes through the same routine just about every day of his life. He cleans his house regularly, goes to the gym, meets his family for church on Sundays, and goes out with his friends looking to pick up girls. Martello has a good batting average in that department too, but even then he still finds himself compulsively looking up pornography. To him, nothing gets better than that. He hopes to change that when he meets Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), a woman who makes it clear the only thing she is after is true love. Martello decides to pursue a long-term relationship with her, but he still can’t quite break his addiction. At the same time, he attends night classes with the ultimate goal of getting his degree, and he meets Esther (Julianne Moore), who similarly is looking for something new.

Usually when actors step behind the camera for the first time, they eschew any visual flair in favor of a more character-based approach. Gordon-Levitt goes so far in the other direction that it’s kind of shocking. Don Jon is an incredibly stylized film, and in many ways it recalls the work of his old friend Rian Johnson of Brick and Looper fame, with maybe a bit of Edgar Wright thrown in. (Gordon-Levitt even goes so far as to use Nathan Johnson, cousin of Rian, for his musical score.) There are a lot of really interesting visual moments here, and in particular the way Gordon-Levitt repeats certain shots, sounds and motifs makes for a superficially alluring piece of work. He may go a bit overboard on the style at some points, but he has a very assured cinematic sense that helps the material far more than it hurts it.

Without these flourishes, the shortcomings of the material might be even more apparent than they already are. Just as every character can be described by their screen of choice, they can also usually be summarized in just one sentence. Martello is the only slightly dynamic character of the bunch, but even then he’s normally more a cartoon than he is an actual person. This winds up hurting Gordon-Levitt’s performance as well. He’s quite good when he has to deal with real emotions, but when his character goes into full-on “fuggedaboutit” mode it tends to be needlessly grating. Not only are many of the characters stereotypes, but they’re familiar stereotypes, and not particularly pleasant ones. Nobody in this film is all that likable, and while Gordon-Levitt sometimes uses that for effective comedic moments, it’s hard to care about them when the film decides on a whim that we should. His father (Tony Danza) is angry all the time, his mother (Glenne Headly) just wants him to meet a nice girl, and his sister (Brie Larson) is a typical teenage girl who is more interested in what her friends are texting her than what her family has to say. Gordon-Levitt might argue that is intentional—the aforementioned Rian Johnson certainly does—but if that is part of the larger point, then the larger point doesn’t quite click into place. It’s not good enough for a character to be one-dimensional on purpose. It has to feel like it was done on purpose.

The most arresting character in Don Jon, by a country mile, is Moore’s Esther. She is the only one who has any subtlety to her performance, and as such whenever Martello confronts her it feels like he has stepped out of an intermittently amusing cartoon world and into something a bit more real. Again, perhaps this is calculated given where the story ultimately goes, but it’s still a bit jarring. In many ways, Gordon-Levitt may be almost too confident with his material in Don Jon, and he seems convinced that no matter what he throws at us it’s all going to feel cohesive. It doesn’t. This is a promising first film in many ways, and it’s an admirably fearless comedy that isn’t afraid to hold back from the R-rated stuff, but Gordon-Levitt draws everything just a bit too broadly. He clearly knows how to put a story up on the screen in an alluring way, but next time a bit more work needs to go into the characters that populate it.

Grade: B-