The explicitly average but entertaining “Don Jon”

Juan Barquin

If there’s one thing to say for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it’s that the guy knows exactly what “bro culture” is like. This knowledge of bros who move through life doing nothing but working out and having sex serves him well, but even with that, “Don Jon” isn’t as great a film as he thinks it is.

We’ve all seen films about drug and sex addiction, but Gordon-Levitt, trying his hand at writing and directing this time around, decides to present the world with an addiction to pornography. Yes, the stuff of straight male fantasies. Breasts bouncing, asses shaking and unrealistic sexual situations that no real woman would be willing to provide to a deluded man.

That’s exactly what the titular character, played by Gordon-Levitt himself, is: a deluded porn addict. He believes that women in real life can never give him what porn gives him, and even when he seemingly falls in love with good-girl Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), porn is the top thing on his mind. When he’s caught, Jon vows to his woman never to engage in such a “disgusting” act again, but addictions are never easy to break.

By its description alone, anyone can tell “Don Jon” isn’t an entirely serious film. No one in their right mind would sit down to write a straight drama about a man addicted to pornography, or at least I’d hope not, and Gordon-Levitt is no exception. He knows how to play with comedy, but some of his directorial decisions make little sense, forcing the film in and out of satire throughout.

There are moments where the sheer ridiculosity of the concept is on full-force, constantly intercutting his addiction with the reality of life in an amusing fashion. This isn’t to say it doesn’t feel gratuitous and grating at times, as you can only really drive the point of the addiction home so many times before it reaches a “Requiem for a Dream” level of repetition.

Then there’s the women. However much the female fantasies of modern porn clips satisfy Jon, some of the women in his life are a far cry from satisfyingly written for an audience that includes more than men of the same ilk as Jon. Brie Larson is criminally underused, a silent figure for most of the film, while the always talented Julianne Moore only comes into play to offer an incredibly strange tonal shift in “Don Jon” that leads it down a path far from comedy.

For all the disappointment that comes with them, every bit of comedic writing intended for Scarlett Johansson comes off without a hitch. Her commitment to this Jersey Girl is impeccable, drawing out some genuine laughs in scenes that are so blatantly ridiculous, you can’t help but fall in love with her as much as Jon, if not more.

Really sealing in that R Rating, Joseph Gordon-Levitt pulls no stops at pushing that stereotypical Jersey accent and style, with every f-bomb you can imagine, and it makes for some entertaining moments. Language isn’t all that’s there though, as the sex count is pretty high, both from the pornography and Gordon-Levitt himself with multiple women. It’s a shame he didn’t take the NC-17 route like Steve McQueen did with his sex addiction drama “Shame” though, because an actual masturbation scene or two would have been nice between all the bouncing breasts.

However weak some of the writing might be, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s debut is actually a fine one. It may be almost entirely about him and his character, but it’s far from the disappointment it could have turned out to be.