Crissa-Jean Chappell
Review of  “Down With Love”
(PG-13) * ½ 

Down With Love is a winking, overly self-conscious copy of 1960s sex comedies like Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back, minus the wit and whimsy. The film isn’t a revival of those arch, Doris Day-Rock Hudson romances so much as an empty imitation. Director Peyton Reed (who made Bring it On, the smirky cheerleader movie) is too caught up in the spangled, Day-Glo surface of that bygone era, forgetting the bleaker tensions that bubbled beneath it. Sitcom writers Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake have tried to revive the spirit of those retro romps – in which suave Lothario Rock tried to seduce perky virgin Doris – through the newfangled prism of the feminist movement. But all the smarmy double-entendres (“I’ve got her surrounded, and it won't take a surprise attack to enter her teepee!”) that poke fun of the sexes fall as flat as they did in the mid-twentieth century. Repeating these played-out gags, even in an ultra-coy context, doesn’t make them sound any funnier.  

Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor bounce and swagger as Doris and Rock knock-offs. Like everyone in Down With Love, they strut and preen as if they’re rehearsing a Broadway musical, removed from any sense of the real. A total lack of spark between the stars (who seem uncomfortable in their gamine and stud muffin roles, as much as their wacky, New Frontier costumes) doesn’t help matters, nor does the bawdy script, which never rises above the level of cheap laughs. Peyton and his collaborators have spiked this irritating picture with leering one-liners and campy sight gags thick on phallic symbolism (think rockets and skyscrapers), hoping to snag the gnat-sized attention span of shockproof audiences in 2003. Unfortunately, all these coy allusions are presented without style or flair, and the smutty, leaden script lacks imagination. 

Set in Technicolor 1962 Manhattan (or the “present,” according to the titles), Barbara Novak (Zellweger) is the new girl in town, teaming up with editor Vicki Hiller (Sarah Paulson) to thwart the old boy’s club at Banner Publishing and get her pink-jacketed manifesto (a love-shunning reverse on The Rules) into bookstores. Barbara’s arch-nemesis is Catcher Block (McGregor), the tomcatting publisher of Know, a high-powered, Heff-style men’s magazine. Determined to destroy her credibility, he disguises himself as a southern gentleman-astronaut, Zip Martin. His plan: trick her into falling for him, the old-fashioned way, then expose her as a fraud. 

Down With Love only reminds us of the slicker, savvier films it’s struggling to duplicate. In a split-screen telephone conversation that sends up the famous scene in Pillow Talk, Catch and Barbara are filmed from different angles that imply more than footsie. Instead of letting the joke build, the brainless film plows straight into an X-rated gag. When someone says, “We’re bosom buddies,” expect Reed to insert a shot of jiggling breasts.

Down With Love’s saving grace is David Hyde Pierce (as Catch’s prissy editor, Peter McMannus) doing the Tony Randall role, laden with gay subtext. Pierce does a dead-on impression of Randall’s clenched, formal posture and twitching neurosis. Randall himself makes a hilarious cameo, playing Banner House’s sinister boss (looking svelte at age 83).

The filmmakers have worked hard to recapture the look of ‘60s sex comedies. This, in itself, is not enough to win our attention. All their effort has an air of desperation, from the kitschy sets to the slang-ridden dialogue. Down With Love plays like a two-hour marathon of TV reruns. Nothing feels right until the end, when McGregor and Zellweger finally burst into song. Unfortunately, it’s during the credits.