Susan Granger’s review of “Down With Love” (20th Century-Fox)
Remember those deliciously delightful Doris Day/Rock Hudson sex comedies? Set in 1962, this homage to that old-fashioned genre begins in Manhattan with perky, coquettish Bobby Novak (Renee Zellweger) launching a feminist manifesto of female empowerment in the boardroom and the bedroom that warns women to just say ‘no’ to romantic entanglements and advocates “a la carte” sex. Bobby and her sharp-tongued editor Vicki (Sarah Paulson) have a hard time convincing their cantankerous publisher (Tony Randall) to take the concept seriously so, instead, they focus on a cover story in a hip men’s magazine called Know. That brings Bobby into a direct confrontation with hotshot writer/playboy cad Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) who has his own agenda involving his boss/buddy Peter (David Hyde Pierce), who yearns for Vicki. A complicated mistaken identity farce evolves – and must then be agonizingly explained. Problem is: director Peyton Reed, along with screenwriters Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, can’t decide whether to imitate that chaste era – in which the bold gender politics of advocating casual sex would have been entirely too shocking – or attempt a hip, campy parody. And while the dialogue has snappy double-entendres and ribald innuendoes, there’s zero chemistry between Zellweger and McGregor. On the other hand, production designer Andrew Laws has faithfully duplicated the color-saturated palette of the Day/Hudson movies, beginning with the kitschy Cinemascope logo and splashing onto lavish sets and Daniel Orlandi’s costumes, photographed by Jeff Cronenweth, using split screens, swipe images and rear projection. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Down With Love” is a snazzy, stylish 7. It’s spark-filled, frothy fun.
