Don Jon (2013)

“There's only a few things I really care about in life. My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. My porn.”

Don Jon reminded me of an article I read online that was about how young people perceive love and sex to be. Unfortunately I cannot remember where the article was from or who wrote it but it was very interesting. It talked about how many young people think sex is like it is in porn videos. They are not seeing sex as something intimate they are not doing sexual acts for sake of doing them (I believe that is pretty much what the article says. I wish I could remember it more). The movie also reminded me of one of the only times I actually turned on the news in the morning and one of the news items was about this show in England I believe that puts people in closed off sound proof room, they have sex which is filmed, and then the couples come out of the room and talk about their sexual experience. Yet again someone commented on how today not too many people talk about sex in a positive way and they just see it as something to do.

            Joseph Gordon- Levitt plays the main character Jon. Jon is obsessed with his porn. His obsession translates into his real life. When he and his two friends are out at a club they see girls and they rate them based on their looks and the way they dress. Jon always rates his girls when he takes them home based on one of the many porn videos he watches. Many of the girls do not live up to his expectations. One night he meets a girl named Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johanson). She is physically perfect and Jon falls for her hard. Barbara is a completely different girl than what he is used to. She makes him wait and wait to have sex with her and also makes him do stupid things that she wants to do. The most important thing to Barbara is that Jon not watch porn.

            Jon is taking classes at college. In his class is an older woman named Ester. She is getting over something tragic in her life and for some reason immediately gravitates towards Jon. She notices him watching porn on his phone since Barbara will not let him watch the stuff on his computer. Ester laughs at him because the porn he is watching is not real.

            One day Jon comes back to his apartment and sees Barbara crying with his laptop open. She looked at his internet history and found that he had been looking at porn. She breaks things off with him. For days Jon is upset and just binges on porn. Ester talks to him about what happened. He confesses that he likes porn better than real sex it offers him a way to escape. Ester helps him see that sex is an emotion and that it is great when there is nothing to judge.

            My favorite scenes were the ones where Jon is going to church. The story is supposed to take place in New Jersey and New Jerseyians are notorious for their bad driving and horrible road rage. I know this from several years of experience being a driver in the Garden State myself. My hand is on the horn a lot, I curse off other drivers for not using their blinkers or driving too slow (I live in an area surrounded by friggin senior citizens!) thinking they can hear me. I was dying when Jon was cursing people off when he was on his way to church and then he and his father would drop more F-bombs at dinner than has ever been dropped before after they have returned from church. Trust me not all people from New Jersey act like Jon and his family they were a little over exaggerated but they were not too far from the true ones.

            My review does not do Don Jon justice but this is as much as I can remember of it even though I saw it yesterday. Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote and directed the movie. Hopefully he will write and direct another movie preferably one that is not entirely about sex. He has potential to become a fantastic writer/director/actor. He did a fantastic job. He kept the movie realistic especially with the relationships. Barbara was just out for herself she wanted to mold Jon into something he was not. Ester meanwhile opened up Jon to his potential and made him feel better and emotional. Don Jon is not one of the best films of the year but it does have a good message. It is not glorifying sex it makes it real.