‘Down with Love’ or — Day and Hudson Meet ‘Barbie’?

It could be easy (but foolish) to dismiss Peyton Reed’s ‘Down with Love’ (2003) as nothing more than a surface-level, shallow homage/parody of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies of the late Fifties/early Sixties. In fact, it sticks to that formula so rigidly it’s almost a straight-up remake of ‘Pillow Talk’ (1959), even opening with the CinemaScope logo. So the question is — will it be doing anything new or simply coasting on empty nostalgia? Well…

1962 and Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger) arrives in New York City for the launch of her debut book, ‘Down with Love’, a book that advocates female liberation from seeking fulfilment through romantic love and marriage and, instead, replacing them with casual sex and chocolate.

When writer for men’s magazine Know, and notorious lothario, Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), is outed by Barbara live on national television for the cad that he is, as well as the fact that Barbara’s book has now become an international best-seller resulting in Catcher’s string of conquests leaving him, this selfish womaniser is determined to expose Barbara as a fraud by pretending to be Zip Martin, polite and chaste astronaut, a Southern man so wonderful Barbara can’t help but fall in love with him thus proving to the world that her ideas of female liberation are wrong and that she desires love and marriage just like any other woman.

However, when Catcher finds himself falling for Barbara himself… yadda, yadda, yadda, so yeah, it’s ‘Pillow Talk’.

What’s most enjoyable about ‘Down with Love’ is how perfectly it captures both the look and spirit of the Day/Hudson comedies so if you’re a fan of those movies (and I most certainly am) you’ll have a blast simply watching a fresh, spirited take on that format with everything exploding in bright pinks, blues and purples as wise-cracks about love, sex and neuroses are rapidly fired back and forth.

The set and costume design is absolutely outstanding (I especially loved Zellweger and Paulson’s anatomically suggestive coats that are, essentially, giant silk labias) and this movie might have the best intentionally hilarious millinery put to screen (Barbara’s hat when she’s on ‘What’s My Line’ is phenomenal).

And it’s not just pretty surface looks with Reed keeping everything moving with an extremely light and nimble touch so sitting through ‘Down With Love’ is a pure delight and when you factor in David Hyde Pierce in the Tony Randall role as Catcher’s neurotic publisher and friend (and if anyone can out-Tony Randall Tony Randall it’s David Hyde Pierce) the film positively zooms along. And then Tony Randall himself pops-up and we realise the film is practically a love letter to the guy!

Not that there aren’t some flaws. For one thing McGregor might have charm but he lacks Hudson’s vital aching vulnerability (always an essential component) and with the film juggling so many angles — loving homage, reinvention, subversion, inversion, modernisation, and period exaggeration — it sometimes runs the risk of tying itself up in knots and tripping over itself.

It also leans a little too heavily into the sexual innuendo (possibly because in 2003 it could) with it veering dangerously close to ‘Austin Powers’ territory on a couple of occasions (and as someone who can’t stand Austin Powers that got me worried), although it pulls out just in the nick of time.

But these are minor quibbles as the good here doesn’t just outweigh any negatives but obliterates them completely as this is a funny, smart, gorgeous looking movie. In fact, by the end it reminded me less of anything by Day and Hudson and more Greta Gerwig’s excellent ‘Barbie’ (2023) as sharp gender and sexual commentary takes place in a crazily camp candy coloured ecstatic environment (at one point we even see a profile close-up of Zellweger’s feet sliding into some high-heeled slippers and she also gets an excellent monologue similar to Ferrera’s).

‘Down With Love’ is really good and even if it was doing nothing more than simply pastiching those Day/Hudson comedies it’s executed with such joyful adoration it’s impossible to resist. The fact it’s also doing a little more just makes it even better.