Review: 'Down With Love' Will Make You Feel Just Swell
Zellweger, McGregor Have Fun In 60s-Style Romance
UPDATED: 7:19 a.m. EDT May 16, 2003
'Down With Love' (PG-13)
(out of four)
If you are looking for a film that is just swell, you are ready for "Down With Love," a frothy confection starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.
"Down With Love" is an affectionate tribute to early 60s sex comedies like "Pillow Talk" with Doris Day and Rock Hudson. It falls just short of satire, but hugs the line pretty closely.
The double-entendres, the sexual politics, the modern woman versus the Neanderthal male and even the split telephone screen are drawn with a broad stroke.
Zellweger is sweet as cotton candy in the Doris Day-type role of Barbara Novak, an apparently naive country girl who gets her big break in the big city by writing a book that encourages women to give up the notion of love and marriage and put career and self-fulfillment first. She also tells women to enjoy sex like a man -- with no emotion attached.
Her philosophy starts with abstaining from sex to clear the mind and substituting chocolate, and ends with having a career and having sex with whoever and whenever you want -- just as long as you don't fall in love.
Enter Catcher Block (McGregor), a jet-setting, prize-winning writer for a men's magazine who can write an explosive expose of the space industry while bedding a few space bunnies at the same time.
Catcher could care less about writing a feature story about the uptight prude and her apparently man-hating tome. But when Barbara's book is a sensation and is snapped up by almost every woman in America, his supply of agreeable playmates dries up and he declares war on "that Novak broad."
His plan? Expose her as a phony who would grab a chance at love if it came to her. And so, the battle of the sexes begins.
McGregor as Catcher may not be the broad-chested man's man embodied by Rock Hudson in his heyday, but he has conquered the suave, egotistical charm embodied by actors like David Niven.
The sidekicks for both characters are also deliciously drawn. David Hyde-Pierce plays Catcher's best friend and publisher -- a neurotic man who has a desperate crush on Barbara's editor, Vicki, played by a delightfully caustic Sarah Paulson in the mode of a Thelma Ritter or Rosalind Russell. Hyde-Pierce has down the Tony Randall-type character cold as Peter MacMannus. (In a nice in-joke, Randall himself plays the nasty head of Barbara's publishing company.)
The dialogue and the set design really separate "Down With Love" from other movies that may try to recreate the swinging 60s.
The sets are brightly colored playgrounds for the rich and famous -- in these types of films you never see a dirty street or a tenement. Catcher's apartment is the glamorous epitome of a swinging bachelor pad and Barbara's digs come with the requisite sweeping view of the city and candy-colored modern furniture.
The dreamy costumes also play a major role as each scene brings the ladies decked out in ever-more elaborate clothes to show their roles as sophisticated city women.
The writer takes the basic conventions of the genre and turns them up a notch, delicately riding the line between tribute and satire.
The dialogue is written with a keen ear for the cadences of speech from the 60s sex-comedy and the double-entendres flow freely throughout the movie, with little need for subtlety. In fact, the writer has taken the use of a split screen when the lovers are on the phone together and given it an entirely new twist that will make many people blush.
At first while watching "Down With Love" you begin to wonder how bad this film is really going to be, but it soon sweeps you along with its infectious spirit and you finally get the marvelous joke told by the creators with a wink and a nudge.
So if you want to lift your spirits and have a good time at the movies, skip on over the theater and get "Down With Love." You'll have a swell time.
(out of four)
If you are looking for a film that is just swell, you are ready for "Down With Love," a frothy confection starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.
"Down With Love" is an affectionate tribute to early 60s sex comedies like "Pillow Talk" with Doris Day and Rock Hudson. It falls just short of satire, but hugs the line pretty closely.
The double-entendres, the sexual politics, the modern woman versus the Neanderthal male and even the split telephone screen are drawn with a broad stroke.
Zellweger is sweet as cotton candy in the Doris Day-type role of Barbara Novak, an apparently naive country girl who gets her big break in the big city by writing a book that encourages women to give up the notion of love and marriage and put career and self-fulfillment first. She also tells women to enjoy sex like a man -- with no emotion attached.
Her philosophy starts with abstaining from sex to clear the mind and substituting chocolate, and ends with having a career and having sex with whoever and whenever you want -- just as long as you don't fall in love.
Enter Catcher Block (McGregor), a jet-setting, prize-winning writer for a men's magazine who can write an explosive expose of the space industry while bedding a few space bunnies at the same time.
Catcher could care less about writing a feature story about the uptight prude and her apparently man-hating tome. But when Barbara's book is a sensation and is snapped up by almost every woman in America, his supply of agreeable playmates dries up and he declares war on "that Novak broad."
His plan? Expose her as a phony who would grab a chance at love if it came to her. And so, the battle of the sexes begins.
McGregor as Catcher may not be the broad-chested man's man embodied by Rock Hudson in his heyday, but he has conquered the suave, egotistical charm embodied by actors like David Niven.
The sidekicks for both characters are also deliciously drawn. David Hyde-Pierce plays Catcher's best friend and publisher -- a neurotic man who has a desperate crush on Barbara's editor, Vicki, played by a delightfully caustic Sarah Paulson in the mode of a Thelma Ritter or Rosalind Russell. Hyde-Pierce has down the Tony Randall-type character cold as Peter MacMannus. (In a nice in-joke, Randall himself plays the nasty head of Barbara's publishing company.)
The dialogue and the set design really separate "Down With Love" from other movies that may try to recreate the swinging 60s.
The sets are brightly colored playgrounds for the rich and famous -- in these types of films you never see a dirty street or a tenement. Catcher's apartment is the glamorous epitome of a swinging bachelor pad and Barbara's digs come with the requisite sweeping view of the city and candy-colored modern furniture.
The dreamy costumes also play a major role as each scene brings the ladies decked out in ever-more elaborate clothes to show their roles as sophisticated city women.
The writer takes the basic conventions of the genre and turns them up a notch, delicately riding the line between tribute and satire.
The dialogue is written with a keen ear for the cadences of speech from the 60s sex-comedy and the double-entendres flow freely throughout the movie, with little need for subtlety. In fact, the writer has taken the use of a split screen when the lovers are on the phone together and given it an entirely new twist that will make many people blush.
At first while watching "Down With Love" you begin to wonder how bad this film is really going to be, but it soon sweeps you along with its infectious spirit and you finally get the marvelous joke told by the creators with a wink and a nudge.
So if you want to lift your spirits and have a good time at the movies, skip on over the theater and get "Down With Love." You'll have a swell time.
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