Down Wth Love (2003)

Down With Love is a good movie that never quite found the audience it deserved.

Starring Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger, Down With Love is a sly and witty updating of the romantic comedies that Rock Hudson and Doris Day made back in the 60s (Pillow Talk, Send Me No Flowers, etc.). The problem is that everybody old enough to remember enjoying the Rock and Doris films was upset at the idea of a bunch of young whippersnappers having the gall to re-imagine their beloved ‘classics.’ At the same time, young fans who knew McGregor only as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Zellweger as Bridget Jones weren’t cinematically savvy enough to get what they were trying to do.

Well neither side knows what it’s been missing.

Down With Love is a lot of fun to watch, from the first time Zellweger wriggles across the screen in her fashionably tight designer dress to the final scene when she wins the heart of the rascally Romeo who, until they met, thought his life was complete being a ‘lady’s man, man’s man and man about town.’

The story spins around a classic battle of the sex’s scenario. Zellweger plays Barbara Novak, author of ‘Down With Love,’ a liberating how-to tale that has women around the world fighting for equal rights in the workplace, the home and the bedroom. McGregor is Catcher Block, the suave scribe at a popular men’s magazine who goes undercover to expose Novak and her revolutionary theories about what women want.

McGregor and Zellweger are downright delightful to watch, as are their sidekicks played, respectively, by David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson.

Down With Love is sexy, sassy and surprisingly sweet without being cloying. It deserves a second chance.

Starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.
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