Down With Love film review

certificate_12A

DOWN WITH LOVE

In an era where cinema is rife with gratuitous sex and violence, a return to a gentler, more innocent time should be refreshing. Down With Love is a romantic comedy in the vein of the wholesome Doris Day Rock Hudson films. But while the likes of Pillow Talk and Send Me No Flowers reflect the squeakier morality of the period, Down With Love's puritan tone is jarringly out of place in today's climate, a factor that is both the film's strength and weakness.

As an exercise in nostalgia, the tone and look of Down With Love possesses a novelty aspect, but audiences now are more sophisticated and the titillating innuendo that was once considered risqué back in Day and Hudson's time, now appears twee and childish, even when more explicit as it is here.

Set in Manhattan during the swinging 60s, Down With Love captures the breezy style of films of the period, from its animated Saul Bass-esque titles, to its bright Technicolor look, to its use of back projection.

Renée Zellweger plays the forthright and fashion conscious author Barbara Novak who has arrived in New York to promote her female empowerment best seller 'Down With Law'. Her editor Vikki Hiller (Sarah Paulson) sets up an interview with Know magazine's star reporter, the "ladies man, man's man and man about town" Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor). Modeled unabashedly on James Bond, the playboy Block has been coerced into taking the assignment by his foppish editor Peter MacMannus (David Hyde Pierce) who is smitten with Hiller.

A womanizer and a feminist are an unlikely pairing, but of such unpromising alliances are romantic comedies made. McGregor does his best to imitate fellow Scot Sean Connery's roguish, debonair charm, though his frail torso being exposed at every opportunity doesn't help his cause. Zellweger's appeal has always been a mystery, and once again her smug coquettishness is more inclined towards annoying than alluring.

At times visually engaging, with some fun sets and colorful costumes, Down With Love is reminiscent of bubblegum, being pink, bubbly and full of air. But once you've chewed on it too long, it loses its flavour.