Film Reviews

Down With Love

• Rating:
• Director: Peyton Reed
• Starring: David Hyde Pierce
• Details: US / 103 mins / (12PG).

A loose riff on the sort of pictures that Rock Hudson and Doris Day used to make together, 'Down With Love' stars Renee Zellweger as Barbara Novak, a small-town girl who arrives in New York to promote her debut book. That book is called 'Down With Love' and it's a vigorous self-help manual for women who've suffered too many broken hearts. Her editor, Vicki Hiller (Paulson) recognises the book's potential and decides to market it aggressively, leading her to the hottest hack in Manhattan, Catcher Block (McGregor), staff writer at the glossy men's magazine, Know. Reluctant to do the interview, Catcher puts off Novak once too often, leading her to label him a cad on national television. Catch, the old rogue, decides to get even, leading to an elaborate hoax, the outcome of which sees Novak in love with an alter ego of Catch's.
Confusing? A little, but Down With Love is the sort of loose, frothy nonsense which is almost impossible not to warm to. Homage-like in its delivery and style, 'Down With Love' desperately yearns to be part of the era which inspired it, even using old fashioned Technicolor glossy stock and a neat jazzy score. The humour is infused with a frightening number of double entredres which grow in nerve as the film progresses, but still manage to retain an aura of likeability, no matter how obvious, which is something that should be said of the performances, too. The characters are so loosely constructed that they often appear more a series of exaggerations, but McGregor and Zellweger have enough chemistry and know-how to make it work in a light-hearted, faintly ridiculous fashion.

Review by Garreth Murphy