Jon Martello is a young Italian-American bartender and modern-day Don Juan living in New Jersey. He enjoys his independent life, which consists of working out, caring for his apartment, driving his 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, going to church with his family, engaging in a casual sex life, and frequently masturbating to hardcore pornography. Though he claims to enjoy sex, he finds it inferior to porn.
While at a nightclub with his two best friends, Jon meets Barbara Sugarman, a beautiful woman from an affluent background. Despite flirting, she declines his offer for a one-night stand. Jon becomes interested, hoping that sex with her will be more satisfying than his usual hookups, and asks her out after finding her on Facebook. Barbara insists on a long-term courtship. Their relationship proceeds over a month and without sex. She pushes Jon to take a nighttime community college class to obtain a career outside the service industry, and he indulges her love of romance films, which he dismisses as fantasy. They meet each other's friends and families, and Jon's parents are immediately smitten by Barbara and hope they will marry.
Jon and Barbara finally have sex, but he is still dissatisfied. Barbara catches Jon watching porn and is disgusted, but he convinces her it was a joke email sent by a friend. As Barbara spends more time at his home, Jon resorts to watching porn on his cell phone. Jon takes great satisfaction in cleaning his apartment, but Barbara, considering it unmanly, insists he hire it out or have her family's maid do the job. At his class, Jon catches Esther – a middle-aged classmate – weeping by herself, and when she sits next to him before the next class to explain herself, she sees porn on his phone. Esther later shocks Jon by handing him an erotic video which she believes has a healthier depiction of sex. Barbara discovers the porn in Jon's laptop history and they fight; he insists that all men watch porn, but she breaks up with him.
Jon watches an increased amount of porn and becomes emotionally withdrawn and erratic. His friend persuades him to finish his college class, where he sees Esther again, and after class they have sex in her car and discuss Jon's breakup. She asks why he loves porn, and he reveals that he gets "lost" in porn in a way he does not with a partner, and has been consuming porn since he was a kid. Jon insists he is not addicted to porn, but when he tries masturbating without it for a week as Esther suggests, he is unable to. Esther says porn has given Jon a skewed idea of what real sex is, and he does not intimately connect with his partners because he focuses merely on his own satisfaction. After suggesting they take a bath together at her home, Esther starts crying and does not join him. She reveals that her husband and son died in a car crash fourteen months prior. Their emotional connection deepens their intimacy, and Jon experiences truly satisfying sex for the first time.
At confession, Jon tells his priest he has stopped watching porn, and though he had premarital sex with Esther, it felt special and unlike his previous connections; he is disillusioned when the priest does not acknowledge his improvement. Jon tells his family about the breakup with Barbara. While his parents are upset, his sister Monica bluntly tells them that Barbara clearly only wanted to date someone she could control. Jon meets with Barbara and apologizes for lying to her, but asserts that her expectations were demanding of him and unattainable. She insists that a man should make any sacrifice for a woman he loves and tells Jon not to call her again.
Although, or because, neither of them is interested in conventional love or marriage, Jon and Esther happily begin dating and "lose" themselves when being intimate.
Development for Don Jon began in 2008, when Gordon-Levitt wrote early notes about the film. Rian Johnson gave feedback during the writing process and reviewed several cuts of the film. Christopher Nolan cautioned against both directing and starring in the film due to the extra challenges it would bring.[9]
Gordon-Levitt has credited his experience directing short films for HitRecord for teaching him what he needed to know to make Don Jon and has said that he hopes to make films in a more collaborative way in the future.[10]
Principal photography for Don Jon began in May 2012.
Rating
In the United States, the film was originally certified NC-17, due to some explicit pornography that Jon watches. Gordon-Levitt decided to remove some of the more graphic scenes to qualify for an R rating because he felt the original rating would cause people to think the movie was about pornography.[11]
Reception
Box office
Don Jon grossed $24.5 million in North America and $16.5 million internationally, for a total worldwide gross of $41 million.[4]
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 80% based on 202 reviews, with a rating average of 6.8/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Don Jon proves to be an amiable directing debut for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and a vivacious showcase for his co-star, Scarlett Johansson."[12]Metacritic gives a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[13] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore on its opening weekend gave Don Jon an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[14][15]
Don Jon received very positive reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. Entertainment Weekly managing editor Jess Cagle called the film "one of the best movies I saw at the fest" and wrote "Funny, touching, smart, and supremely confident, Don Jon is also Gordon-Levitt's feature directorial debut, and it establishes him as one of Hollywood's most exciting new directors."[16] William Goss of Film.com praised Gordon-Levitt for his "assured style" as both director and screenwriter.[17] Edward Douglas of ComingSoon.net gave high praise to the screenplay.[18] Consensus of the film when it was played at the Sundance Film Festival, as noted by Odie Henderson, was that Don Jon was a "more fun version" of the 2011 film Shame.[19]
The supporting actresses Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore received praise for their performances.[20][21] Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice praised the film, writing: "There's no dancing in Gordon-Levitt's writing-directing debut, Don Jon, although the movie is so heavily reminiscent—in the good way—of Saturday Night Fever that an arm-swinging paint-can reverie wouldn't be out of place."[22]
Don Jon was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 31, 2013 (New Year's Eve).[24] By June 2014, over two million copies of the Blu-ray were sold.[citation needed]
^Kaufman, Amy (April 22, 2013). "Joseph Gordon-Levitt: I cut some graphic porn from 'Don Jon'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 30, 2014. The Sundance cut was us pushing it past where it really ought to be, and I think it was sort of distracting for audiences. People came away feeling like, 'Oh, this is a movie about porn,' and I was like, 'No, it's not a movie about that at all.' I think because those images were so strong, they were leaving a heavier impression than I wanted them to.
^Douglas, Edward (September 16, 2013). "Don Jon Review". ComingSoon.net. Mandatory. Archived from the original on March 19, 2021. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
^Henderson, Odie (September 27, 2013). "Don Jon". RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC. Archived from the original on March 19, 2021. Retrieved April 30, 2014.
