After seeing something as gratingly powerful as Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” it perhaps occurred to Joseph Gordon-Levitt that for most, Internet porn is not as severe as a crippling sex addiction, and yet it’s prevalence suggests something much deeper about our culture.
This is nothing new. The think pieces about how it’s changing our kids’ perceptions about sex, relationships and what defines someone as attractive are everywhere. Vanity Fair wrote one just this week. The media has immense influence, and it most strongly affects those who already display a level of naiveté and arrogance.
That’s perhaps why the eponymous protagonist of Gordon-Levitt’s “Don Jon” is not just a narcissistic Jersey boy but also a lowest common denominator schmuck without much to his name beside his seedy browser history. In his attempt to make a film about addiction, media overdose and modern, self-centered personalities while still keeping “Don Jon” a swift, funny, 90-minute sex romp, Gordon-Levitt is somewhat grasping at straws, making the ideas in it as thin as the movie’s buff hero.
Yet JGL’s ability to make Jon disarmingly charming even as he’s playing the fool is what makes this indie comedy rise above the rest of the rom-com, media trash the movie condemns. Continue reading “Don Jon”