Down With Love

Most of the feedback I received from friends regarding Down With Love involved the words "strange" or "um, interesting." Indeed, for those who have never seen any of the three Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedies (Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers) that the film pays frequent homage to, Down With Love may justly seem as though it has come from another planet (a pastel one at that). Those familiar, however, with Day's virginal heroines and Hudson's smooth-talking lotharios will gladly welcome this bright pastiche into their living rooms.

Set in 1962, the film stars Renee Zellweger as Barbara Novak, a small-town New Englander who has moved to the big city in time to see her protofeminist manifesto, entitled Down With Love, published. Thanks to some crafty marketing by her editor, Vikki Hiller (Sarah Paulson), the book becomes an overnight sensation, much to the chagrin of the city's men, who are not eager to see their wives and girlfriends bucking their authority. Among these unhappy customers are Novak's own publisher, Theodore Banner (played by Tony Randall, whose sadsack role in the original Day-Hudson films is wittily reprised here by David Hyde-Pierce), and men's magazine reporter Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), who has been publicly cited by Novak as a prime example of the chauvinistic swines women should avoid. His reputation as "a woman's man, a man's man, a man about town" suddently in jeopardy, Block sets out to expose Novak as fraud.

Throughout the film, Zellweger undergoes enough costume changes to make Sex and the City clotheshorse Carrie Bradshaw blush. The outfits are fabulous, as are the sets (especially Catcher's bachelor pad, which seems to have been inspired in equal part by Pillow Talk and Austin Powers), but a number of critics found the film hollow beneath this cheerful facade.

Yet Down With Love does not merely attempt to mimic the Day-Hudson movies; rather, it elucidates the artificiality and careful tongue-in-cheek construction that went into making them all the while maintaining an entertaining storyline for modern audiences to follow. Zellweger and McGregor ably channel their 1960s counterparts, and what results is a charming comedy harking back on a bygone era that never was.