Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Rated 14A.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway get to display many appealing sides in Love and Other Drugs, which attempts to combine romantic comedy with serious glimpses at a little-understood disease.

The highly enjoyable effort is also a change of pace for director Edward Zwick, known for epics like Glory, Legends of the Fall, and Blood Diamond.

Here he returns to the edgy domestic sphere he explored in TV’s thirtysomething. Events centre on Gyllenhaal’s Jamie Randall, a stand-in for Jamie Reidy, who wrote Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, on which this is based.

In 1996, Jamie is fired from his latest job. Whatever. Bagging cute customers and coworkers is his true vocation. He reliably disappoints his wealthy Chicago parents (George Segal and the late Jill Clayburgh), although lack of ambition allows him to drift into a newly lucrative field: pharmaceutical sales. This involves corralling doctors into handing out samples of new wonder drugs—daunting until he realizes that the best route is through their receptionists.

Reaching the most recalcitrant MD (Hank Azaria) likewise allows him to go after extremely attractive patient Maggie Murdock (Hathaway). Jamie’s medical subterfuge doesn’t sit well with this tough, free spirit. But it does suit her penchant for sexual liaisons with aggressive, emotionally unavailable dudes. Ironically, learning about Maggie’s condition—early onset Parkinson’s Disease—makes him genuinely interested in her.

The challenge here, as the youngsters shed their inhibitions and clothes (believe me, Hathaway will look back on this movie with pride), is for them to drop poses they’ve spent their lives cultivating. The presence of Jamie’s trollish brother (Josh Gad) as comic relief is a rather clumsy tip-off that Zwick wants us to lighten up, even as we get a sharp critique of Big Pharma’s mercenary nature. I just wish he hadn’t given this smart little film such a soft-focus ending. Until then, though, it’s pretty addictive.