Don Jon Sheds Light on a Sensitive Subject

Porn. With one word, you can basically throw everything you think you know about, the hopeless romantic from “500 Days of Summer,” into a trash can along with a distressing amount of suspiciously balled-up tissues. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is the lead actor, as well as the writer and director, clearly has some nerve. In his debut feature “Don Jon”, he tackles the issue of addiction, not to pills or booze, but to the adult videos and endless self-pleasure that comes with it. And somehow stacked precariously on top of the sticky feeling of this comedy, he gives us an apt social commentary.

Jersey bartender “Don Jon” Martello (Gordon-Levitt) rests his existence on three things: his consistent streak of sleeping with the 8s and 9s that stumble into his bass-thumping club; his warped, narcissistic self image; and his tissue-filled nights “making love” to the computer.

And there’s the kicker. Jonny-Boy loves porn more than real sex with living, breathing women. Drowning in pictures of airbrushed models and endless streams of erotica, he simply can’t keep himself from objectifying women in a reductionist and perfectionist light. Nothing lived up to porn.

Then Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson) strides into the club, like she’s straight out of a Jersey Shore episode, and Don Jon is knocked a few pegs down when the “dime” doesn’t put out. It’s intriguing enough, that he pursues what could be very nearly be called a serious relationship. Which, I might add, pleases his boisterous Italian mother and father (Glenne Headly and Tony Danza) to no end.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, Barbara’s perspective of romance is distorted by her obsession with stereotypical, wince-worthy romance movies. You know the ones I’m talking about: “The Notebook,” “Pretty Woman,” “Dirty Dancing”; the ones that usually end with people riding off into the sunset together.

With the deep-seeded need to pad the resume of her newest beau, Barbara jumps the line between needy kitten and demanding shrew, forcing Jon to meet her friends, take a night class and most importantly: stop watching porn.

Spoiler-alert: he doesn’t. Because what’s important to Don Jon?

“My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. And my porn.”

Although not a new idea, the film is offbeat and smart enough that it just works. This coming-of-age story is told through looped montages that switch sharply from the church confessionals where Jon divulges his “count-of-the-week”, and well… a myriad of lude women on his computer screen.

Now, I’m not going to lie, there’s an excessive amount of porn in this movie. You are left in a perpetual state of uncomfortable disgust, and cringe every time you hear the guy’s Mac boot up.

But there is no pandering. It’s not just there to appeal to the large demographic searching for raunchy humor. It is on purpose. Because at some point, the addiction becomes mundane. Boring. It’s almost normal that this guy sees women as merely objects of pleasure. It seems weird you’re searching for moral guidance in such an absurdly chauvinistic character, and yet you find that satirically, Gordon-Levitt is criticizing the lens in which we look at the world based on the media we watch. And it’s not just the porn.

What’s so impressive about this movie is how deceptively heartfelt it is. It’s about a guy who will go to any length to take his mind off the matters of his heart. This is thrown through the ringer when he meets Esther (Julianne Moore) at his night class. Quirky and unapologetically frank, she moves his growth along not with her words or actions, but with her vibe. She feels everything in the sharpest way she possibly can. And she feels it constantly, drastically different from the numbingly detached Jon.

Even the awful, hyperbolic, gum-smacking horrors that are the Jersey accents of the caricatures somehow managed to work in the scheme of things. Most of this, however, is courtesy of the overflow of talent within the cast.

Julianne Moore, as usual, brilliantly underplays the role of Esther; while on the other end of the scale, actors Headly and Danza ham it up as the cliche Italian family. Don’t get me wrong though, hearing the star of “Who’s the Boss?” drop as many f-bombs as you and I drop pronouns was one of the many highlights of this movie. Scarlett Johansson hits the nail on the head in her role as squarely as Barbara approaches her courtships.

But the rightful hero here is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. As a writer he is witty, insightful and frighteningly accurate; as a director, he pulls something out of his actors that is stripped-down and still full of comedic value; and as an actor, he portrays the modern-day Don Juan with an authenticity that is distinctly his style. I think it’s fair to say that the boy’s got promise. This is just the beginning.