Review

Review Date: 18-May-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Down With Love (2003)

You know something is wrong with a romantic comedy when it stars Renée Zellweger, a talented and versatile actress, and Ewan McGregor, quite possibly the most adorable adult of our species this planet has ever seen, and it still doesn't manage to satisfy. Such is the case with "Down With Love," a visually stimulating but entirely unengaging homage to the Doris Day-Rock Hudson era that is heavy on gimmick but light on soul. I know it's all in good fun, but even the fluffiest book needs something besides a cover.

The movie follows the romantic escapades of Barbara Novak, a sweet 'n' sassy gal who arrives in the Big Apple circa 1962 to promote her work "Down With Love," a manual instructing women how to gain new freedom by replacing their traditional yearnings for love and marriage with career ambition and an appetite for casual sex. The worldwide success of the book makes Novak a target for Catcher Block, the star reporter for a men's magazine who decides he has to debunk Novak in order to defend both his readership and his own playboy lifestyle. Taking time off from his active schedule of bedding flight attendants, Block adopts the persona of an astronaut with nonthreatening geek glasses in an attempt to woo Novak into admitting that she does want a husband. Of course, he succeeds in his goal while inadvertently falling for her in the process. Block and Novak are both assisted and imitated in their supposedly droll fumblings toward true love by their comic sidekicks, played by doe-eyed Sarah Paulson and David Hyde Pierce in full Tony-Randall-from-the-'60s-mode (even while the real Tony Randall has a cameo).

The "something" that's wrong with this movie is the screenplay by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake (and the choices of director Peyton Reed, their accomplice). The complete reliance on style over substance wears thin pretty quickly, revealing nothing else to back it up and little justification for the movie's sentimental pretensions. Romantic comedies (modern ones, at least) often fail because they never bother to show why the principals fall in love, or why the audience ought to root for them to overcome the obstacles that always engulf the story. This is certainly true of "Down With Love;" and while it may be excused from delving too deep into the minds and hearts of its characters by being as much a '60s retro tribute as a bona fide love story, it still needs to provide something beyond the visual --- wit, charm, warmth --- to attain and keep our interest. (Also, the trailer did promise proof that romance isn't dead, which set up some expectations.) Yet these elements are sorely lacking.

The dialogue contains a few ribald puns and double entendres but isn't consistently zingy, which may explain the repeated attempts to enliven the stars by showing off their bodies (with the man's more frequently naked, for once, probably because there's less opportunity to provide him with an eye-popping wardrobe). In addition, the pacing of the film is off, leading to jarring segues, absurd revelations, and long stretches of absolutely no import. It takes a full 30 minutes for Block and Novak to come face to face (I know; I was already checking my watch); then there's a two-minute montage depicting their days of courtship; and then the story rambles off into an extended, clunky denouement. In this way the script completely skips over the meat of the matter --- the leads' flirting, sparring, and lovemaking --- thus diminishing the climax central to all romantic comedies: the consummation of repressed sexual and emotional longing, and the admitting and forgiving of deception in the name of the undeniable Real Thing.

The cast, the production designer, and the costume designer all make a game showing here, but with nothing to build upon but a frothy, naughty-lite atmosphere, their efforts feel rather cold. Zellweger can be perky with the best of them and paints a convincing portrait of randy in pink, but she does not have the inherent likeability of Doris Day (who does?) and would have benefitted from a greater opportunity to be either funny or sweet. McGregor's got a killer accent and a crooked grin that could melt Iceland, but Block never transcends the cliché of the "ladies' man, man's man, and man about town." Both of their characters spend most of the movie pretending to be something they're not, leaving us with no investment in their happiness and no understanding of the magic that cut through their fraud, making them fall for each other against their own wishes and better judgment. Conveying heat and brightness only in its colors and a couple of broad sexual gags, "Down With Love" never made me give a fig whether its two smarmy cut-out dolls found love in each other's arms or continued on with their simpering, self-absorbed, pitiable little lives.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.