Catcher Man - or maybe a bar of chocolate will do instead! (Down With Love (DVD))

Member Name: cswann

Product:	Down With Love (DVD)
Date:	13/12/03 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great sets and costumes, Quick fire script

Disadvantages: Not too sure whether it loses its way

You might think this is a remake of an old Doris Day and Rock Hudson
movie, but it isn't - it's either a homage to those films or a parody, or
more likely it's both of those things.

Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor are the lead characters, and there's no question that Zellweger plays the Doris Day role to a tee. McGregor is less easy to categorise, partly because his role is a cross between Cary Grant and Rock Hudson, and partly because he's less convincing in his role than she is in hers.

Zellweger seems like a hard-working sort of actress, and does well here.
She did really well with "Bridget Jones's Diary", "Me myself and Irene"
was a low spot, "Chicago" was a triumph... she wasn't very convincing as
the romantic lead in "One True Thing" or "The Bachelor", though, then
things got better in "White Oleander". That's a lot of movies in only a
few years.

Let's get back to "Down with Love" - she is a lot lot better than Ewan
McGregor, I think, and definitely the main reason to watch it.

The movie is firmly based in New York in the early 60's - but in many ways
it seems like it's in the 50s (wasn't that always the case with those
Doris Day movies - way behind their time?) It's not exactly the swinging
60s then, just a bit before they got going with the swinging.

Renee Zellweger plays Barbara Novak, a Maine librarian who has just
written a self help book, a bestseller, called "Down with Love". The
subject matter of the book seems to be one of the only concessions to the
swinging 60s - the 'feminism' of her theories, i.e. women don't need men;
chocolate is better than sex, sort of gets the story into the second half
of the century at least.
Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) is a man about town, playboy writer on men's

magazine "Know".

The characters are very superficial - there's even a stylised way that
they move around - and many of them pretend to
be someone else as part of the complicated plot - but then that's not only something that happened in Doris Day films - Shakespeare, anyone?

The clothes, music, the interior decor - it's all very period. All very
colourful, and, in the case of some of Zellweger's outfits, very in your
face.

This movie is a prime example of the romantic comedy genre. It's full of
will-they-won't-they moments. But it's not just the story that matters. We
very quickly become aware it is a parody, and it's really not a very subtle
one.

Overall, the movie can be quite laboured at times. There are some
out-of-time moments such as where the double entendres creep in ("it's not
long enough, I can't make it fit") which would not have been in a 60s
film, certainly not a Rock Hudson and Doris Day film. And they become
quite funny because of that (because really, they can be seen only as
tired, seaside card jokes in today's world).Having said that, I quite like the
technical side of the split screen naughty scenes (and they do bring to mind those wonderful scenes in "Pillow Talk").

David Hyde Pierce (Niles in "Frasier") and Sarah Poulson play Catcher and
Barbara's friends, and there's a secondary romantic comedy going on with
those two, which is quite enjoyable. I enjoyed Pierce's performance as
another rich boy with very little to do except worry about love. Pierce
takes on the role that Tony Randall used to ply in the Rock/Doris movies.
Tony Randall himself appears as the head of the publishing company that?s
selling Barbara's book - a nice touch that anyone over 40 will appreciate.
It will probably be lost on anyone any younger.
>
If you liked "Pillow talk", "Bridget Jones", or "Working Girl" - you should be OK with "Down with love".

Peyton Reed is the director - he'll be bringing us "The Fantastic Four"
next year, which if the look of "Down with love" is anything to go buy,
will be a visual treat.

101 minutes long

Summary: