Down with Love – Zum Teufel mit der Liebe! (2003)

Down with Love – Zum Teufel mit der Liebe!: Directed by Peyton Reed. With Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Sarah Paulson, David Hyde Pierce. In 1962 New York City, love blossoms between a playboy journalist and a feminist advice author.

“DOWN WITH LOVE, director Peyton Reedu0026#39;s homage/spoof of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson sex comedies of the early 60s, is a delightful bit of fluff in a movie season filled with inferior sequels and overwrought epics. Dazzling to watch, with Givenchy-inspired costumes (if Daniel Orlandi does not receive an Oscar for his work, his peers should turn in their Designer cards), wonderfully over-the-top sets (EVERYBODY in those 60s films lived in apartments you could land airplanes in), and a u0026#39;More 1963 New York than 1963 New Yorku0026#39; look (created on the studio back lot, with ample support from CGI), the film would deserve a viewing even if the cast never uttered a line of dialog!u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFortunately, the script, by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, is wickedly funny, full of the politically incorrect double entendres that were as close as Hollywood could get to actual u0026#39;naughtinessu0026#39;, 30 years ago (and, yes, there are more than a few present that WOULD have been censored, even then). The story, of a woman who writes a best-selling u0026#39;self-helpu0026#39; book eschewing the necessity of men for any more than u0026#39;casual sexu0026#39;, and the u0026#39;Hugh Hefneru0026#39;-like writer who turns his prodigious charms to work, in the guise of a naive astronaut, to win her love, and thus discredit her theories, would have fit Doris Day and Rock Hudson to a u0026#39;Tu0026#39;. While Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor lack their role modelsu0026#39; charisma, they have a pleasant chemistry together, and the u0026#39;split-screenu0026#39; phone call scenes between the pair are even racier than the Day/Hudson 60s versions.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIf the leads seem a bit bland, the supporting cast more than makes up for any shortcomings. In a role that SHOULD garner a u0026#39;Supporting Actoru0026#39; Oscar nomination, David Hyde Pierce takes on the part assumed by Tony Randall or Gig Young in those 60s farces, that of the put-upon, neurotic, sometimes prissy friend of the hero. He is superb, even SOUNDING like Tony Randall, and steals every scene heu0026#39;s in. His u0026#39;opposite numberu0026#39;, friend of the heroine Sarah Paulson, while not quite at Pierceu0026#39;s level, is still quite funny as a chain-smoking career woman who would chuck it all for the right man. And, in a FABULOUS piece of casting, the MAN himself, Tony Randall, appears as the book publisher whose bestseller is RUINING his love life. At 83, the man can still toss off a funny line…u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWith a very inventive u0026#39;twist-within-a-twistu0026#39; climax, and Marc Shaimanu0026#39;s evocative score punctuating the proceedings, DOWN WITH LOVE is a delight!”