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Don Jon | 2013 | R | - 8.3.10
A pornography addict (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is called "Don Jon" by friends, he treats everything and everybody as an object and always has an attractive date on the weekends, but he is unhappy until he meets two women that enlighten him about life and love. Also with Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Glenne Headly, Brie Larson and Tony Danza. Directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. [1:30]
SEX/NUDITY 8 - A man and an older woman have sex in the back seat of her SUV and they go to her house, where he floats in a bathtub and we see his bare chest, shoulders and arms; when he walks into the living room, he has a towel wrapped around his waist and the woman is shown wearing a knee-length nightgown; she straddles him on the couch (we see her back as she puts a condom on him) and they move together slowly (we see the outline of her nipples through her gown) and both gasp; they thrust together under a sheet and we see their bare shoulders and arms, then a close-up of their faces as they kiss several times.
► Several scenes show a dimly lit bedroom where a man and one of several women lie under a sheet, thrusting until they gasp; he grunts and grimaces while thrusting and we see his back and the woman's bare shoulders and arms in each of these scenes; twice, we see the man take a condom from a drawer filled with condoms, but do not see him put it on. A woman wearing a sleeveless blouse and tight jeans stands in her hallway, facing her apartment door while her boyfriend stands close behind her, touching her breasts and rubbing his groin on her buttocks until he gasps in orgasm (fully clothed); he looks stunned and the camera cuts to his apartment the next day where he looks at several pairs of jeans with crusty stains on the groin areas, indicating ejaculate; later, he looks at the woman's pictures on Facebook (all clothed) and we hear from the voiceover that he is masturbating as the scene ends.
► A scene shows a close-up of a man's head between a woman's legs, while a voiceover says this is oral sex. A woman is shown with her face next to a man's groin area in a dimly lit bed, but we see no movement. A man goes to a bar every weekend where he picks up a different girl, dances closely with her, they writhe together on the dance floor, walk to a couch, sit and kiss passionately; he takes each one home in a cab and the camera cuts to later at night when the woman is shown asleep (we see her bare shoulders and arms) and he is shown shirtless and he leaves the bed and sits at his laptop to watch pornography and masturbate (we see his arm move rhythmically below the desk and a tissue hit a waste basket). A dozen times in the film, we see one arm moving under a desk on which a laptop sits and the camera cuts to a tissue thrown into the waste can (implying masturbation).
► A woman kisses a man on the cheek in a café and he tells her that he wants to have sex with her using crude terms; she smiles and we later see them kissing passionately in a movie house lobby. On two movie house screens, we see either one of two couples kiss passionately before becoming engaged and married.
► Several women in clubs wear tight knit dresses with scoop-necks or V-necks that reveal large amounts of cleavage; their short skirts reveal most of their bare thighs and lower legs. A man appears shirtless in a gym or sitting at his desk several times, revealing his bare chest, back, shoulders and arms. A man sits nude on a couch with his groin area covered by the angle of his laptop. Two men wear undershirts at the dinner table, baring their shoulders and arms.
► Several flashbacks and real time sequences of Internet pornography videos appear in the film with scenes flashing by very quickly: from the waist down, we see the behind of a woman dressed in sweatpants with her back to the camera and a man wearing sweatpants facing the camera and rubbing his genitals through his pants; other images include several close-ups of breasts bouncing, several close-ups of female faces as they gasp and cry out in orgasm, several close-ups of bare female buttocks in G-strings, and women wearing scanty bikinis in long shots, revealing full bodies, except genitals and nipples. A sequence of fast-changing Internet video scenes starts with an animated male squirrel whose eyes pop out toward a female cat wearing a dress and showing enormous cleavage: the other images include a woman wearing a one-piece swimsuit in a swimming pool where we can see her bare shoulders and arms; a close-up of six female sets of buttocks in spooning position as they stand wearing thong underwear; several women wearing scanty bikinis in a long shot; a woman wearing an extremely tight-fitting dress from which large breasts are half-way out the scoop neckline (no nipples show); a woman wearing a scanty bikini as she falls unconscious with a purple blob on her forehead; and a shirtless man exposing his full bare chest.
► A man and his male friends go to a club every weekend and rate the women patrons on a scale of 1 to 10 remarking on the size of their breasts and buttocks; one friend takes home only women who rate 2s and 3s, saying that they have open minds about sex and he never learns their names. Several men stare at women's behinds throughout the film and smile; the father of one of the men stares at his son's girlfriend's buttocks, she laughs, turns around and kisses him on the mouth.
► A burger commercial on a big screen TV shows a scantily clad model with large breasts and buttocks wearing a small bikini on a beach; she lies in the sand, facedown, unhooks her top (we cannot see her chest), and takes a bite of a burger while a voiceover says, "It's not just a piece of meat." In college classes and his car, a man watches pornography on his tablet phone and an older woman asks him if he is watching sex and he becomes embarrassed; in a later class, the woman gives him a copy of 1970s pornography on a DVD and tells him it is completely different than 2010s porn.
► A woman discovers a man that she just had sex with using pornography and after they start dating, she finds him again and breaks up with him; he says he does not know what's wrong with him. A male voiceover says that when he hears the sound of the laptop booting, he becomes as hard as a [F-word deleted] rock. A male voiceover says that he gets hard as a [expletive deleted] rock when he looks into his girlfriend's eyes and that making love is better than pornography. Every Sunday, a man goes to confession and four times, we hear him confess that he had sex 1 to 7 times, kissed a girl, and masturbated either 17, 22, 30 or 31 times that week; he then receives penance from a priest and says the penance prayers while working out in the gym each week. In two scenes, a man says that he likes porn better than sex with an actual woman. Several times, a man says that every guy watches pornography every day. A man says to himself that he broke his record of 10 orgasms by masturbation one day by having an 11th orgasm and we see that his wastebasket is full of tissues. We hear that a man always had a laptop for pornography, except when he was a kid, and then he had Playboy magazines. A woman asks a man if he has ever masturbated (using crude terms) without pornography and he says that he has not; in a week's time he tells her that he tried and failed and she tells him that porn sex (masturbation) is totally one-sided, A man says to another man that the second man likes only girls that look like boys and the second man denies it. A woman in a club tells female friends that her new boyfriend and she have not yet had sex and the other women say that that is amazing and good. A male voiceover says that he does not like the missionary position, because he cannot see the woman's body. A man says that he was about to have an orgasm while watching porn scenes with a woman and a man, until he saw how ugly the man in the shot was. A woman calls a man, "You sexy animal." A man tells his male friends that if you treat a woman right, you'll get the best sex in your life. A woman tells her brother that some women use sex to manipulate men.
VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - A man exhibits constant road rage as he drives, calling other drivers names and shaking his fist at them as he curses; in one scene, he becomes so angry that he leaves his car sitting in line at a traffic light, approaches another driver's vehicle and punches through the driver's side window, cutting his hand; he curses and we see blood on his hand (we do not see a cut or bandage and we do not see any injury to the other driver); on another day, he backs out of a driveway angrily and erratically, racing down a street and shouting.
► A man and his father argue loudly at every Sunday dinner about what the son is doing with his life and about the weekly football game. A man and a woman argue very loudly about the man's pornography addiction; he says that all guys watch porn every day and she shouts and breaks up with him. A man and a woman argue briefly about whether sex in modern porn movies is real or not. A man and a woman argue in a department store about doing housework; she maintains that they should always have a cleaning lady. We hear that a woman's husband and son died in a car accident not long ago and that this is why she cries frequently.
LANGUAGE 10 - About 138 F-words and its derivatives, 31 sexual references, 46 scatological terms, 31 anatomical terms, 9 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory term for homosexuals, name-calling (crazy, stupid, retarded, pathetic, dumb, loser, weird, liar, selfish), 8 stereotypical references to men, women, Italians, Jews, Catholics, parents, pornography addicts, and older women dating younger men. 4 religious profanities (GD, Jesus [expletive deleted] Christ), 16 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God x 4, Oh For God's Sake, I Swear To God, Jesus Christ, Jesus, Oh Jesus, God, Christ).
SUBSTANCE USE - Three men smoke a marijuana cigarette and drink beer in an apartment, a man and a woman smoke a marijuana cigarette together in a car and in a house, a woman tells a man that he is like a junkie with his addiction to pornography, a man says that he knew a guy in high school that smoked heroin and that watching porn is not as bad as heroin addiction, and a woman says she should not get high before coming to class at college. Four family dinner scenes show bottles of wine and beer on the table and glasses of wine at each place setting (no one is shown drinking), a man drinks from a bottle of beer, several club scenes show dozens of men and women drinking mixed drinks and bottles of beer as they dance or talk, a restaurant scene shows people in booths as they drink mixed drinks and bottles of beer, a bartender serves mixed drinks to people seated around a bar and we can see beer taps and a few liquor bottles behind him (no one is shown drinking), a woman drinks a large glass of wine at an outdoor café, a man tells a woman that she was pretty wasted (drunk) the other night and she says that she had a few drinks, pictures of a woman show her holding margaritas and other mixed drinks, and a man pours wine for a mother at a princess birthday party for little girls and she drinks it. A woman smokes a cigarette.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Relationships, pornography, addictions, respect, love, values, family, friends.
MESSAGE - A one-sided relationship does not work.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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