Down With Love Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)May 27th, 2003
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When I was about eight or nine, my dad got sick for the first time I could remember - I think it was the Hong Kong flu or something. I remember being pretty concerned seeing him abed all day in a fairly weakened state, but then, a few days into the illness, he perked up when Pillow Talk came on television. At the time, that didn't strike me as being particularly odd.
I just got out of a screening of Down With Love, which is meant to be a throwback to those old Rock Hudson/Doris Day films from 40 years ago (they made three pictures between 1959 and 1964, with Pillow Talk being the most popular). And now, with 20/20 hindsight, I realize my dad must have been sicker than I thought because Love is harebrained and insufferable, and it completely misses the line between camp and crap. Apparently there's a good reason why they don't make movies like this anymore.
Love is the perfect counterprogramming for movie lovers who don't want to see The Matrix Reloaded. Essentially, Love is a film about pussy, although it...uhhh...pussyfoots around that dreaded word by using supposedly clever double entendres. And for a film about pussy, Love sure seems like it came from that place around the corner (you know, where the fudge is made).
Borrowing much more from Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl than anything with Rock or Doris (aside from the producers digging up their 83-year-old costar Tony Randall for a cameo here), Love is set in 1963 Manhattan, where farmer's daughter/librarian Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger, Chicago) has just arrived from Maine on the eve of the printing of her first book. "Down With Love" preaches female empowerment in a world where men still say things like, "That woman thinks she has a mind of her own," and it's an instant hit, heralding the genesis of the sexual revolution.
This presents two problems. For Barbara, it means she can't get any guys to go near her pussy because they all hate her and the unexpected repercussions of her book. For ladies' man Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor, Attack of the Clones), the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from Know magazine who Barbara outs as an unmitigated pussyhound on national television, it means his never-ending trail of tail has dried up. So Catch assumes an alter ego to woo Barbara in hopes of turning the experience into the greatest magazine piece in the history of the world. Meanwhile, there's a subplot involving the romance between each of their editors (David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson), which is just stupid when it's so obvious the editors just want to sleep with their writers. Pierce playing a guy who isn't sure if he's straight? Groundbreaking cinema, that.
On the plus side, this is, like, the fourth film in a row where McGregor manages to keep Ewan, Jr. in his pants. As talented an actress as Zellweger is (I think she should have won Best Actress the last two years), in Love she's merely a clothes hanger for an endless parade of crazy duds. Kudos to the folks who designed the sets and costumes, but whoever was responsible for the score (or the insane decision to crank it up that loud) should be taken out back and shot. The old-school Fox and Cinemascope logos were a nice touch, as was the scene where director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) combines Pillow Talk's infamous split-screen with Austin Powers' (near) nude scenes.
What is unforgivable, though, are writers Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake (of the upcoming Legally Blonde sequel) and their groan-worthy attempts at snappy dialogue that constantly fall flat. And just when you think you've made it through the whole stupid thing without that big song-and-dance number (because it's apparently a contractual obligation at this point for McGregor and Zellweger to do so in every film), there it is, during the closing credits. Anyone who sticks around until the end deserves every last second of it.
1:49 - PG-13 for sexual humor and dialogue
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