“Don Jon”: Joseph Gordon-Levitt watches porn

“Don Jon” is “(500) Days of Summers’s” evil twin. And by evil twin, I mean the twin who is the version of you who put on 20 pounds of muscle, womanizes women of the night,” and burns through bandwidth watching porn like a free and unrestricted Wi-Fi signal in downtown Karachi. This is Levitt’s first time directing, but you hardly notice as you will be distractedly smitten with everyone’s “Jersey Shore” accents. Then Tony Danza shows up, roided out, simultaneously answering the question of “Where’s the Beef?” and “where has Tony Danza been since the 1980s?” (should not be crossed out) Other than Gordon-Levitt’s impressive attempt at winning the protein-choice award for 2013, the film does as good a job at being provocative as it does with providing a much needed social commentary on pornography.( should not be crossed out)

Much like it’s binary “(500) Days,” both stories feature pretty lovable yet incredibly selfish characters. It’s not until other characters chime in with their side of things that we get to see this. But I digress further as this is about porn. Here is the plot summary: Don Jon watches porn. He also likes women, but he mostly likes porn. He likes porn so much that he even threatens a relationship with Scarlett Johansson because of it.The take away is a stark depiction of something society used to be afraid to talk about, something society has actually encouraged to the point of ignoring social consequences. These consequences, as Don Jon so comedically shows us, include things like preferring pornography to traditional sexual interaction as our standards for “sexy” has gotten so eccentric that missionary is just about as appealing as the original dictionary definition. Don Jon is so bored with real sex (which he only really does to impress his bro-montanas) that he sneaks out of bed with Scarlett Johansson to watch porn in the next room.

So if you are looking for a bro-comedy, heavy on the bro-fists, fist pumping and dude centric humor of sorts, you will likely find a few scenes for you. But be warned–this is, at it’s core, a satire of all the above and essentially a social commentary. Unless you don’t understand (should not be crossed out) sarcasm, then it might just seem like that terrible Marky Mark flick, “Pain & Gain.” However, Gordon-Levitt does this so well that the faint of heart may actually get quite uncomfortable as Gordon-Levitt’s character, as the title of this article suggests, watches porn. So you get to watch someone watch porn, which is actually a type of porn, creating a whirlwind of mixed emotions resulting in a trip to your old Catholic school’s confessional, wondering how many Hail Marys it’s going to take to get back into the good graces of Jesus Christ. Father McCreary ball parked it at around five, falling under a sin of omission. Maybe you should just watch the movie?