Down With Love

Reviewed by EWAN MCDONALD


Herald rating: * * *

A little scene-setting is necessary for readers of NW and voyeurs of the E! entertainment network. In the 60s Hollywood specialised in bedroom comedies that reflected America after the war and before the sexual revolution.

The most famous stars of those coy romantic comedies were Doris Day and Rock Hudson, and you will be even more surprised to learn that in those days before tell-all magazines and watch-all TV shows, no one knew that the screen's most famous hunk was gay and would die of an Aids-related disease and that the best-known one-liner about his co-star was, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

This is a tribute to, almost a remake of, those movies. Barbara Novak (Renee Zellweger), a suitably perky girl from the Midwest, arrives in New York in 1963 to pump her book, Down With Love, the first salvo in the sexual revolution encouraging women to assert themselves at work and in bed.

First Novak and her editor, Vicki Hiller (Sarah Paulson), must overcome the reticence of the men running Banner Publishing, particularly its chairman (played by Tony Randall, who played beside Hudson and Day in the originals).

The pair arrange an interview with Know magazine journalist Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor). Because he thinks the book must have been written by an angry old maid, Block stands them up for dates with three swinging stewardesses. When Hiller arranges Judy Garland to plug the book on The Ed Sullivan Show, it becomes a bestseller and women reinvent themselves as "Down With Love girls."

On a game show Novak puts down Block and his lifestyle. With the help of his best friend, editor and Hiller's boyfriend, Peter MacMannus (David Hyde Pierce), Block reinvents himself as Major Zip Martin, Southern astronaut. By making Novak fall for Martin, Block will reveal that the author of Down with Love is a fake, ending the feminist craze and putting the world back on its right-wing axis.

Down With Love is a much better movie than it sounds, largely because of Zellweger's Doris Day-like naivety and the chemistry between her and McGregor.

It's rounded out with Hyde-Pierce's supporting role — reprising his TV character, Niles Crane, an echo of Tony Randall as Rock Hudson's original sidekick.

Everything about the movie evokes the films it style-checks: costumes, split-screen phone calls, rear projection trips in vintage cars, groovy pads, a soundtrack that you could conduct with a cocktail swizzle-stick.

DVD features: movie (102min); commentary by director Peyton Reed; Here's to Love TV performance; deleted scenes; Guess My Game, featuring Barbara Novak; hair and wardrobe tests; blooper reel; 6 features, On Location; Creating the World of Down with Love; Costumes; Swingin' Sounds; Down with Love, Up with Tony Randall; Split Decisions; HBO Making Of ...; music special.