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It was better before you were born. This was the
creamy nugget of wisdom that I learned from Down With Love,
the lighter-than-air, retro-romantic comedy directed by Peyton
Reed. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how old you might
be, everything under the sun was better, funnier, wittier
and sexier about twenty years before you were born.
This movie basically has the same plot as How to Lose
a Guy in Ten Days, except done in the style of a Rock
Hudson-Doris Day movie. Then why was it that I found Down
With Love extremely endearing, while How to Lose a
Guy left me wondering what Matthew McConaughey would look
like if you ripped the skin off of his face and nailed it
back on upside down? I don’t normally wonder about such
things. At least not about Matthew McConaughey. Both are movies
about a man and a woman who fall in love by lying to each
other for 90 minutes. But one of them takes place in the early
1960’s, complete with bouffant hairdos and slender single-breasted
suits. And that makes it charming.
Down With Love takes place in 1963, a much more innocent
and simple time. Kennedy was still president, and as opposed
to now, only a select few were aware that he got his missile
polished by a White House intern on a regular basis. The Rat
Pack determined who was cool and who wasn’t (Peter Lawford),
and no one had figured out yet that the Edsel was a piece
of shit car. I told you it was all better back then. Of course,
if this movie were actually made back in 1963, it would be
taking place in the early 1900’s, and everyone would
be waxing nostalgic over the Model T.
Renee Zellweger plays Barbara Novack, the author of the book
“Down With Love”, a pre-feminist tract that is taking
the world by storm. Essentially, it is “Fear of Flying”
written as a self-help book. Its basic thesis is that women
should put out only when they want to. This ideology is revolutionary
to pre-Beatles Invasion America, and every single woman and
housefraü from Park Avenue to Peoria has taken its words
to heart.
This, of course, upsets the natural balance of things. The
men are unhappy with this shift of power, and demand that
someone fight on their behalf. As usual, it is up to Ewan
McGregor to save the world. And, as usual, all he needs to
do so is wield his trusty, um, light saber. (Come on. He played
Obi-Wan Kenobi. I had to make a bad Star Wars joke.) McGregor
plays Catcher Block, a “lady’s man, man’s man,
man about town”, a guy so hip and with it that he’s
equally at home flying over Manhattan in a dinner jacket with
three show girls falling over him as he is playing bongos
at a downtown beatnik party. In addition to partying all night
long and sleeping with anything with two legs that stands
over 5’10”, he is also the Pulitzer Prize winning
magazine writer for “Know”, a men’s magazine
molded in the style of GQ, back when people actually read
GQ.
Catcher is living a charmed life, until every single woman
in Manhattan reads Novak’s book and decides that they
don’t need to sleep with a womanizer in order to find
happiness. In order to set the world right, Catcher does the
only thing he can: meet Novak, pretend to be someone else,
make her fall in love with him, and expose her as the feminist
fraud that she really is in a penetrating cover story for
his magazine. If only real life was that easy.
Another thing I learned from watching Down With Love
is how to deal with the opposite sex. In the future, if any
woman is giving me trouble - friend, colleague, co-worker,
that nice lady behind the deli counter - all I have to do
is make them fall in love with me. It’s just that simple.
What follows are your garden-variety romantic/comedy hi-jinks.
And while we’ve seen this kind of movie before, it all
seems fresh and new, thanks to Director Peyton Reed and Production
Designer Andrew Laws, who do wonders with this faux-retro
film. This film has no qualms about re-arranging the geography
of Manhattan. When shown the view from Novak’s Upper
East Side apartment, we can see the Empire State Building,
the Chrysler Tower, and the Statue of Liberty. And they’re
all the same exact size.
While all of this was nice and good, production design does
not a quality film make. If that were true, Jerry Bruckheimer
would be an Oscar winner 5 times over. No, the movie really
belongs to the stars Zellweger and McGregor, as well as the
able second bananas David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson. Paulson
plays Zellweger’s editor, and Pierce plays McGregor’s
foppish best friend, a role that, back in the 1960’s,
used to be played by Tony Randall. Randall also shows up,
gamely passing the torch to this new generation of beautiful
urban sophisticates.
Zellweger and Paulson strut through the film with confidence
and flair like they’ve got a pair. And McGregor and Pierce
primp and preen themselves to perfection, in preparation for
their dates. The two men make sure that their pants cuffs
are the proper length, their shoulder pads are as flat as
possible, and not one strand of hair is out of place. I’ve
never seen two men put that much effort into their appearances.
And that was the one thing in this movie that didn’t
ring true. Back in the day, all the men in these movies made
it seem effortless. Do you think that Dean Martin would be
caught dead worrying about his hair? That would take time
away from his drinky-poo.
One last thing I learned from this movie: Men Are The New
Women. In Down with Love, McGregor and Pierce pay more
attention to their hair and clothes than most women I know,
yet oddly, this is not perceived to be particularly “fruity”
or “gay”. If any man who was really around in 1963
spent 10 minutes discussing his sock garters, you could rest
assured that he would wake up the next morning in a dress
tied to the field goal post of his high school football field.
Yet it is exactly all this primping and preening that makes
McGregor’s Catcher Block attractive to women. This trend
is taking hold in modern times as well. Men are just as likely
to get facials, manicures or botox treatments as women. Just
like women, they are terrified of cellulite, and have given
up their steak for salad. And, just like women, men today
don’t mind giving the occasional blowjob. Just so long
as you hold them afterwards.
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Ewan
McGregor and Renee Zellweger in a scene from 'Down With Love'
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