Susan Granger’s review of “Better Living Through Chemistry” (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
The ironic title riffs on a DuPont advertising slogan, “Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry,” which was used to promote the company from 1935 to 1982. In this dark comedy, it refers to a pill-popping pharmacist who misuses prescription drugs.
Doug Varney (Sam Rockwell) is a straight-laced, small-town druggist whose life catapults out of control after delivering medication to the home of enticing Elizabeth Roberts (Olivia Wilde), the tipsy, negligee-clad trophy wife of a traveling executive (Ray Liotta). Dominated by his exercise-obsessed wife Kara (Michelle Monaghan) and unable to handle his troubled, insolent 12 year-old son Ethan (Harrison Holzer), Doug has just taken over control of Bishop’s Pharmacy, previously owned by his condescending father-in-law, Walter Bishop (Ken Howard). Seduced by uninhibited Elizabeth, he quickly learns about mixing medications. While discovering that he can “get high on his own supply” liberates Doug’s sex life, it inevitably leads to an investigation by a bumbling DEA official (Norbert Leo Butz) who discovers alarming discrepancies in his inventory.
Written and directed by Geoff Moore and David Posamentier and filmed in Maryland, the original cast consisted of Jennifer Garner as Elizabeth and Jeremy Renner as Doug. Their replacements – Olivia Wilde (“Rush”) and Sam Rockwell (“The Way, Way Back”) – handle the somewhat formulaic sit-com script well, relishing their edgy, over-the-counter romp in Woodbury, somewhere in upstate New York. And Doug’s fantasy life – which includes besting his wife in the annual cycling competition and concocting a medication that could kill Elizabeth’s husband – could easily rival any wish-fulfillment in James Thurber’s “The Secret life of Walter Mitty.”
Problem is: the syrupy, self-referential narration by Jane Fonda, presumably playing Jane Fonda, while often amusing, eventually proves to be disconcerting. She’s a part-time Woodbury resident and astute observer, cryptically noting about Kara: “I know a thing or two about working out.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Better Living Through Chemistry” is a featherweight, subtly idiosyncratic 6, most memorable for its clever, slightly raunchy one-liners.
