Down With Love
Picture: B-
Sound: B Extras: B Film: B+
When Down With Love (2003) was announced as Renee
Zellweger’s next project after the impressive Chicago (2002), it first
sounded like another Musical and the marketing did confuse some people into
thinking that. She even sings once, but
the film is meant as a tribute to the romantic comedies of the 1960s populated
by the usual stars of the cycle, like Rock Hudson, Sandra Dee, Tony Randall,
Doris Day, James Garner, Thelma Ritter, Edie Adams, Paul Lynde, Paula Prentiss
(before her cycle of Thrillers), and other great comic character actors of the
time.
Actually, it goes much farther than that and is a strongly
surprising comedy that turns those films on their head, keeping the style and
shtick of those old film, but being far from as neutered. Director Peyton Reed had previously scored
commercially with Bring It On, but whatever the strengths of that film,
nothing could have prepared us for this gut-buster. Eve Ahlert & Dennis Drake deliver a knowing screenplay that
smuggles its meanings so obviously, that you will understand the older films
much better upon future viewings.
They have covered everything and have an exceptional grasp
of what was really going on in those older films. They have a real love of what the legacy really was. This extends to everyone else who worked on
the film, including the cast and director.
Barbara Novak (Zellweger) has written a book that shares
the title of this film. It is a guide
on how to be liberated from men and be a feminist. The all-male publisher thinks nothing of it, but her female
publishing ally (a hilarious Sarah Paulson) believes otherwise and pushes for
the book. She convinces Barbara that
the rich and powerful Catcher Block (the underrated Ewan McGregor) can use his
publishing power to help promote her book, but he keeps canceling his
appointments. He is so arrogant, he
even drives his common sense assistant (the great David Hyde Pierce) nuts.
Novak will not take no for an answer, and decides to hunt
Block down until she gets what she wants.
The twist occurs when he gets the upper hand and starts to pretend to be
someone else. She is also being
somewhat coy, and that’s not the half of it.
Instead of being too cutesy and running into pointless repetition, the
film is extremely perceptive of the male/female relationship, now and then, as
well as how little much of the politics have changed. How both sides can still act so silly out of insecurity and
wanting dysfunctional control, then it finds every bit of humor it can out of
it.
Many compared and contrasted this film to more serious
recent efforts out of the same era like Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven and
Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus (both 2002), but it actually does for those
1960s romantic comedies what Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? (1972)
did for the Screwball Comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. Both understood all of them, then boldly and
very successfully brought together all the great elements (minus the past stars
for the most part) into one exceptional film.
Sadly, because Fox had too many good films at the time,
like the hits Phone Booth (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and X-Men
2, this film was strongly overlooked, but the DVD release is bound to
change that. Add the word of mouth it
will get and this will be a picture that should eventually catch on. If it really goes over, Fox ought to
consider theatrical reissue, especially if the Academy Awards people could
remember some of its finer points.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is credited as
CinemaScope at the beginning of the film, but that is in frame only. The actual lenses were Panavision and that
older system used two lenses that often caused distortions the newer single-lens
systems do not. The transfer is not
bad, but not as clear as expected, as if the telecine artist was trying to make
it look like older CinemaScope. That is
not the way it looked theatrically, but that will not be too distracting, and
this is not to say the picture is THAT distorted either. It will make for an interesting comparison
whenever the D-VHS version comes out.
Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, A.S.C., was very public about this look
not being his kind of shooting, but his mastery of darker material (David
Fincher’s Fight Club) and other past use of scope framing gives him an
edge in the exaggerated depth and wide, long shots that the older films were
famous for.
The exaggerated set sizes (just to fill a Scope frame) and
the attention to color detail further enhanced digitally, which was not as
obnoxious as expected, is effective and feels totally authentic when
old-fashioned rear projection is thrown in.
The sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1, but unfortunately, not DTS. Mark Shaiman’s score is on the money, with
its naďve whimsy in full swing. There
are also some other great moments of sound, like when Block first appears,
leaving a helicopter by ladder! Shaiman
even seems to be referencing John Barry’s Goldfinger score (1964), when
the camera pans a Florida resort. The
older films were, especially when Fox made them, in multi-channel magnetic
stereo sound. This mix remembers that,
even having fun with the idea of a greatly lost sound feature: traveling
dialogue.
Extras include a good commentary by Reed, who 8
mini-production featurettes, the HBO Network special on the film, a funny gag
reel, the videotape footage of the Block/Novak duet from the film that appears
on TV then in their time, and some deleted scenes. Some of those scenes could have stayed in the film, and all of them
have more informative commentary. These
“value added” features are so good, you will wish there were more, but these
also have rewatchability.
The cast also has great chemistry, and the appearance of
Tony Randall as the head of Novak’s publishing company is a great plus. These people work exceptionally well
together; you can feel the joy and spontaneity of the scenes, some of which
were hard to do without laughing to death.
The truth of the mater is that these are some of the best actors working
today, and Reed has a very promising future as a director. I admire how smart Zellweger keeps choosing
her roles, especially now that she is in power to pick and choose. McGregor is such a great comic actor, but
also can do Action and Drama with equal ease.
He does his homage to several of the great male leads of the time, like
Dean Martin, Sean Connery, Garner and Hudson among others. Pierce is essentially playing the role Randall
did in the prototypes for this kind of work, advising the lead while sometimes
being clue-limited himself.
Down With Love is the year’s most underrated
film and should not stay a secret much longer.
- Nicholas Sheffo
