Usually lovable, shy, and romantic, Joseph Gordon-Levitt strayed far from his usual roles in his recent film Don Jon, which he surprisingly wrote and directed. Gordon-Levitt plays Jon Martello, an image-obsessed Jersey boy who has family dinner every week and goes to church every Sunday. But Jon has one secret no one knows: he is an obsessed porn addict. Jon is a handsome guy who can get any girl he wants from the club he frequents every Friday with his friends, but he prefers watching porn over actual sexual intercourse. He meets Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson)-who pulls off a surprisingly good Jersey accent-and the two quickly fall for each other. Truth be told, Barbara’s character comes off as annoying; she craves this 24/7 macho guy and it shows when she gets offended that Jon likes to clean. Barbara even suggests he get a maid and not talk about cleaning again because it isn’t manly. I don’t know about her, but what girl wouldn’t appreciate a guy who cleans?
Barbara is everything Jon wants in a girlfriend but Barbara has a few things she wants to change about Jon, which leads him to a class at the local community college. There he meets Esther (Julianne Moore), an emotional widow. (The first time they meet she is crying on the college stairs.) Over time, his bond with Esther becomes a beautiful support system, which appears odd at first but grows into an amazing relationship. The movie shows the same interactions with the same people, so it would have been great to see Jon interact with others or possibly in a setting like a porn addicts anonymous meeting. Through his interactions with his family, friends, girlfriend, and forever crying classmate, Jon must learn the difference between media influences and real life. Full of a few laughs and a few raunchy images, Joseph Gordon-Levitt did an amazing job for his first feature film. It’s a film definitely not for the under-17 crowd, but it’s a movie plenty of young adults can learn from.