Edward Zwick tries to become Cameron Crowe and delivers a dud of a rom-com with Love and Other Drugs.

Talk about stepping out of your comfort zone. Zwick’s films (Glory, The Last Samurai) have always revolved around war and/or politics, and never bored. None of those factors apply here.

It’s a shame, because the elements that could have made Love and Other Drugs a good movie are there in front of us. You have two attractive leads in Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, slick production design, and a dramatic sub-plot which should evoke varied emotions, and yet...nothing.

Gyllenhaal tries his best Tom Cruise as Jamie Randall, an unbashful cocksman and pharmaceutical salesman, who hits the jackpot when Viagra comes on the scene.

His world is turned upside down when he meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway), a free spirit afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. A strictly sexual relationship develops, until (of course) they eventually fall in love.

Both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway give credible turns, the latter especially impressive, if not a little over the top, in her portrayal of the Parkinson’s condition.

Yet Love and Other Drugs just feels beyond Zwick’s capabilities, with story and characters suffering as a result. The mix of raunchiness and sentimentality just does not gel, comedic timing is non-existent, and supporting turns by the usually reliable Hank Azaria and Oliver Platt fail to deliver.

No doubt another director with a feel for this type of material could have made something worth investing in. Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) or Stephen Frears (High Fidelity) are filmmakers who spring to mind and their absence is our loss.

How ironic, that Love and Other Drugs fails to stimulate in any capacity, even with the good looking pair often naked and mid-coitus, with the level of intimacy and passion here just does not registering.

By the time it came to that scene where a boy stands in front of a girl and declares his love, it is proof positive that Zwick must have been higher than a mother to think he could pull this off.