Thanks for Sharing

It’s not surprising that we don’t get a lot of romantic comedies about sex addiction. Rom-coms need to maintain a light and playful tone even when their characters are dealing with difficult situations, and its tough to make any “disease movie” feel light and playful. Addiction movies operate within an even more restrictive formula than rom-coms, typically falling into two categories; raw indies that attempt to convey a direct sense of their protagonist’s pain, and earnest Hollywood melodramas which offer too many easy answers. If Steve McQueen's Shame, from 2011, represents sex addiction for the indie film world, Thanks For Sharing, by first time director Stuart Blumberg (writer of Keeping the Faith and The Kids Are All Right) presents the Hollywood take. Blumberg populates his film with a cast of worthwhile actors whose stars have faded (Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Carol Kane), and anchors the movie with a great performance from Mark Ruffalo, who is always charismatic even when playing a less-than-likeable character. Despite all this talent, and a winning acting début from pop-star Pink (Alecia Moore), the movie never quite gels.  There is real potential in a exploring the difficulty sex addicts must have when trying to form deep, lasting, monogamous romantic relationships, but too much of this movie is played for laughs, and when it does get serious it crosses too far into TV melodrama territory.