Down with Love (2003)

Very well executed

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Down With Love is a 2003, rom-com, written by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake (both of whom are known for writing: Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)), and directed by Peyton Reed (Reed also known for films such as; Ant-Man (2015) starring Paul Rudd and Yes-Man (2008) starring Jim Carrey). The film also features renowned actors and actresses; Renée Zellweger as the renowned feminist author, Barbra Novak, Ewan McGregor as the playboy journalist, Catcher Block, Sarah Paulson as Novak's publisher, Vikki Hiller and David Hyde Pierce as Catcher's Editor, Peter MacMannus.The film is set in New York in the year 1962, a time at when women were struggling to find their voice within the work place. Completely undermined by men who believed women are only seen as sex objects.We follow the story of Barbra Novak, our protagonist, and author of the book Down with Love. We see her at the beginning of the movie meeting with her publisher Vikki Hiller, as they are on their way to pitch her book to the publishers. They sell the book as follows; that it's a step by step guide to help women liberate them from the hold men have on them. It paints love as an illness that can be cured, and that women need to make it their mission to be independent. And that they too can enjoy sex without needing to form bonds with the person they are engaging with. The book is a hit and it goes viral. Women start withholding sex from men whenever they want to have sex, and women take on the gender role of the man to show that she too can be in charge. This doesn't sit well with Catcher Block. Who, like his name suggests, is made out to be the catch that every woman wants. And now suddenly because of this Pink Book, book he no longer gets what he wants. Women start using him whenever they feel like it. Catcher then goes to his editor Peter McMannus, and tells him that he'll prove that Novak is like all other women, and that they all long for the same thing, to be married with children, the typical American Dream wife. He takes on a new persona and deceives Novak into falling in love with him. All the while Peter and Vikki start a heated affair. It's a rat race against love and in the end a twist occurs that will leave you stunned, showing that it was Catcher that was the one being deceived the whole time, and that in the end women hold the power. The film concludes when it shows that the man must sometimes also swallow his pride and realize the woman isn't always going to come running his way. But that they actually have to meet each other in the middle, and that you need to take a chance on love and be willing to take risks. And that even the most infamous playboy can find his lid.We see a New York being sold as the perfect place to be, bright colours, women in skirts men in suits, show the ideal world. Everyone has money in this film, we see this with the spacious town houses that Catcher and Barbra live in. It looks like it comes out of a 1960's lifestyle magazine. She is also shown living in her ivory tower looking down on the male world she has conquered. This grand scale of spaces the characters inhabit is in direct correlation with the characters who are all larger than life, very theatrical and with stylized acting styles, the characters are shown as being very superficial and shallow. We also see Novak moving like a Barbie doll. The score of the music also makes you feel like this should be set as a musical. The music is definitely one of the driving forces of this film, as it feels like a ball that has been set rolling and the character's heartbeats are matched to the beat. You just want them to break out into song. We see Barbra's character and almost every female character wear the colour pink or other feminine colours. Opposed to Catcher who we see in blue as well as all the women he has slept with also wearing blue, almost suggesting that he owns them. Women are seen as secretaries and housewives, we also see a scene where a woman starts reading Novak's book and suddenly her husband has to take care of the kids and the household, while she sits in front of the TV and reads The Pink Book. The pink book draws correlation to a sort of guiding system, a book that has only been written for women and not for men. Every shot has been carefully crafted to fit in with the flow and rhythm of the whole film. As well as keeping with a linear, cause-and-effect narrative. Then we get to the lovely suggested phone-sex scene between Barbra and Novak, very reminiscent of similar scenes in Michael Gordon's 1959's Oscar winning film Pillow Talk, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day, where the characters of Brad Allen (Hudson), and Jan Morrow (Day) talk to each other over the phone as the screen is split into two spaces to make it look like Brad is lying next to Jan in bed, later it is also used to make it look like Jan and Brad are sitting next to each other, talking over the phone, there is also the case of Brad deceiving Jan into thinking that he's someone he's not. Sound familiar? Such is the case with this scene in Down With Love, where we see Reed playing around with this form of storytelling, and actually taking it a step further to make it seem like they are having sex, it's comical, fun and very clever, it also adds to the tease value of the whole film. Shapes are seen in the mid- and background, circular cushions, big and impressive square buildings, and triangular roofs. Maybe hinting at the class systems and the way that things are seemingly well organized and categorized according to an unspoken yet widely accepted status quo. As we delve deeper into the film and you start to wish that Catcher will stop with his nonsense, questions are being raised, questions like, is love just a distraction? Who is the real seducer? Is there more to love than just physical attraction and sex? When is it okay to have sex? What do women really want? Can a man/woman be in a monogamous relationship and be happy? What is the ethics of equality? So many important and unanswered questions people don't actually talk about. We perceive women through the male perspective of society. They are seen as only wanting a man to settle down with, marry and have kids with. Men are seen as only wanting one thing, and that is a woman to use as a sex object, and that if you keep sex from them they will do anything you want. We see such a colourful world, by means of costume, lighting, mesa-scène etc. It makes us think back to old-school Hollywood romantic comedies, especially that of Rock Hudson and Doris Day. But when you start to look at the way that it's presented to the viewer you start to think that the writers and the director is trying to say something. They're trying to say that the way that romantic comedies presented love and falling in love before this film, was at fault. The ones before this one is being accused of romanticizing love to the extent of idealizing love. And that's what's happening in this film. Novak's movements like a Barbie doll, made me think about, this movie has a feel to it, like it's being played out by a five year old girl, with a Barbie doll in one hand and a Ken doll in the other, but at the end of the film, that girl has grown up and she's way more opinionated about what she wants in her perfect man. Women are shown as wearing dresses and feminine coloured attires, it address directly the issue of, why should women look so feminine all the time, can't they just for once look normal, especially in a film which has the core function of being a incarceration of a small fraction of life. The Pink Book, becomes almost a Biblical metaphor in the film. As it is known the Bible has been written by men for men, women don't really feature too strongly in the Bible. It almost asks the question, then were are the women's guidelines to life, were is her Bible? The Pink Book represents this Bible for them, that if they follow this steps in the book, they'll make a success out of their lives, and they do. They become independent and they start to be a real woman. When we get to the "sex scene" between Catcher and Barbra, the director proves yet another point. That you can tell a love story to much smarter by not even having them say a word, the frame of each shot tells you something, this shouldn't be used as a gimmick, but rather as a smart way to show that this isn't just your average rom-com, it's more than that, it's not only saying something about the way love has been portrayed in every Hollywood film before this one, but also that love and interactions with characters can be shown on many different ways in film. We need to even in the cliché genre of the rom-com be aware that we are dealing with an art form and that we need to express that form in more ways than the conventional. Shapes are used to symbolize the way that society categorizes life into its many organized and precise facets and own little boxes. But why do they need to be so well organized, why do we need to be so adamant on gender roles, why can't we blatantly talk about something such as sex, when people so easily destroy their lives chasing it so eagerly? For you the answer may be simple and straight-forward, and it might be a stupid question to ask, but we don't ask these questions enough, we are too afraid to offend someone, or to look stupid, that we go through life ignorant or like characters in a rom-com. The film is set in 1962. Which isn't so for no reason. The 60's were a turning point in the feminist movement of the USA. In the 1960's we saw women fighting for equality, we saw women wanting to be educated, taken seriously in the workplace and they even petitioned the right to abort a pregnancy at will. Women started to fight back against the American Dream that said the only way a women will ever be happy is if she is submissive to her husband. And here we see in this film a female character that stand just for this. She initiates a m

By being crude, raunchy and mean-spirited, the whole movie is not at all like the Doris Day-Rock Hudson originals it is supposed to spoof. There are so many little touches they COULD have used to make this amusing and fun - one thinks the writers hardly looked at the originals when they wrote the script! Ewan McGregor is a laughable 'metrosexual' when compared to the he-man types of Rock Hudson or James Garner of the period this is supposed to spoof.Except... for one role. David Hyde Pierce saves the movie. He does such a SPOT-ON take of the classic Tony Randall role and the dialog that is written for him is SO perfect it would have been a hit for Tony Randall to read the same lines in the early 60's. I swear, they must have had one genius writing for Pierce and a roomful of morons writing the rest of the movie.

Down With Love is a satire film that good-heartedly pokes fun at those films from the 60s starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson, and it does it in the most convincing and charming way.They way that the movie is filmed is entirely in the same way that movies were filmed just at the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The characters are written in that same quirky sex-crazed style and it is such innocently sinful fun. Every joke is sex related, but subtly and sophisticatedly so, so that if a child fourteen or under should watch it they wouldn't understand why the adults laugh. Renee Zellweger fits this style of movie perfectly. She looks beautiful in the wardrobe of her character and she really brings the 60s back to life with her performance. Ewan MeGregor, I felt was a little miscast. I didn't quite believe him as the 'Playboy' but his chemistry with Zellweger brings up his performance and you have a good time watching the silliness of the past unravel before you.I don't understand why this film didn't do well. It's good light-hearted fun, as every romantic-comedy should be, and really takes you back to a time when movies were bright and silly and lovable. I loved it and give it a 6.7/10

I saw this more as an experiment, a chance to pay homage to a time and place in movie-making. I was also reminded of "Breakfast at Tiffanys" a tad in its glamorization of that Jackie Kennedy/Audrey Hepburn period of high ladies fashion. It was sort of a 50's lag, a last vestige of the classy old styles before the hip/hippie modern era would sweep them away forever. Call it the end of elegance, if you will.On the other hand, it was the end of an era for the more innocent screwball comedies/romances as well. Movies changed just as abruptly, and got just as down to earth in its realism as the fashions. So, we are seeing here a double homage, to the fashions, and the more lighthearted tenor of movies, in the 50's/early 60's.The movie did well in the plot/story/jokes department. It was a tightrope, because if they got TOO risqué or hip, it would take away from the tenor and point of the whole retro/throwback thing. In that case, it inevitably would come across in some ways as a retread and stock, but that was the price paid for doing this. There simply was not much room to work with in any sense per plot development, and tongue-in-cheek can only go so far without betraying homage to the old school of doing things. With the aforementioned built-in restrictions, I think that Payton Reed did a pretty darn good job here! Well worth seeing, and a must-see for those who love retro fashions and movies.