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Down with Love
EMAILPRINTThe 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 30 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by:
Eve Ahlert
Dennis Drake
Directed by: Peyton Reed
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 9, 2003
DVD: October 7, 2003
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for sexual humor and dialogue
Starring Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson, Tony Randall, Jack Plotnick, and Rachel Dratch
An old-fashioned romantic comedy with a twist. Putting a hip spin on the golden age of the classic Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedies, the film is the story of a sparkle-filled collision between a woman who has sworn off love and a ladies' man who thinks he doesn't need love. (20th Century Fox)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Bring It On The Break-Up
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A very smart, very shrewd movie, and the smartest, shrewdest thing about it is the way it masquerades as just a fluffy comedy, a diversion, a trifle.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
Sexy, sophisticated comedy that only occasionally falls short of its admirable ambition: that is, to be a fun, fizzy, razzle-dazzle thing. Straight to the moon, indeed.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
A postfeminist valentine to the Paleolithic days of Woman Power when dinosaurs walked Manhattan in heels with matching handbags.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
it's so much fun because, like Haynes' film, it's made by people with a genuine love for the entertainment they're bringing back to life. You'd have to be a real prude not to go for it.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
May register most immediately as a snappy whirl of visual gags, double entendres, overheated romance, and comically oversized living quarters, but beneath the exuberance of this fond counterfeit is a heartbeat as powerful as that of any film anchored in the present.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
No better or worse than the movies that inspired it, but that is a compliment, I think.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Doesn't so much crackle as pop. It has enough double entendres to fill a D-cup, but it has a premise that would have burned a hole in the screen in 1962, when its story is set.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Could have used more of the shimmering elegance of the Day-Hudson comedies. Those movies had a true sparkle. This one's a likable piece of costume jewelry.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
This is all far beyond silly, of course - the most inconsequential sort of winking, meta-movie in-joke.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Brad Slager
Doesn’t so much immerse itself in the movies from that period as it submerges, and does so with pure adulation.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Works hard to earn it and is, for the most part, intelligent and amusing, even if it never achieves the full-tilt zany desperation of Delbert Mann's "Lover Come Back," the best of the real Hudson-Day movies.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Ray Conlogue
A bit like having a detached retina. One keeps blinking and trying to get it into focus, but it never quite does. What, one wonders, is this movie doing here?
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Dragging on too long is a more serious flaw in a romantic comedy than it might be in a complex drama. We don't ask much of a movie like this, but we do require it to be snappy, clever and quick.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
The problem lies with the paucity of sizzle between the romantic leads, Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. They just don't look like they're having any fun together, particularly the bony Zellweger, who has trouble filling out the wow-worthy ensembles and perpetually looks like she's sucking on a lemon.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Both of them (Zellweger and McGregor) are set adrift by the movie's discomforting demands, and only in the closing credits (this really is a top-and-tail movie) do they get to do what people do most fruitfully instead of sex, which is to make a song and dance about it. Who needs love? [26 May 2003, p. 102]
Village Voice Laura Sinagra
Unfortunately, during the inevitable "what every woman wants" breakdown, Zellweger can't muster Doris Day's detached fume.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It's like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch on a $60 million budget.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Zellweger is a gifted comedienne and her wonky persona sparks here and there, but the humor is so broad that the film is a poor stage for her subtle comedic skills, and she's not photographed well: her face has to be lit just so or it tends to looks strangely distorted. McGregor is terrible casting.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
What starts as freshly spun cotton candy ends as something pink, sticky and indigestible. You leave the theater wanting to puke it up.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The fatal flaw of Down With Love... is that in mining what's kitschily amusing about those movies, it also re-creates far too faithfully everything that's unbearable about them.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The film is juvenile when it should be adult, coarse when it ought to be bubbly, and upfront when witty circumspection is indicated. The result feels a bit like a drag show, a camp blend of pitch-perfect mimicry and anachronistic raunch.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
The new film is conflicted about its subject -- it both derides and adores what it means to parody -- and it's miscast at the top. Still, the Eve Ahlert -- Dennis Drake script has a gentle heart to humanize its sharp sitcom wit.
Read Full Review >Premiere Howard Karren
The period sets and costumes and the arch dialogue are exaggerated as if to underline the movie’s satirical intent—but in fact it has none.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
Director Peyton Reed gets the film's look and, in moments, its disingenuous innocence, but you have to wonder what he and the screenwriters, Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, thought they were parodying. The actors clearly haven't a clue.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
Stars Zellweger and McGregor are too knowingly nudge-wink in their performances, too much contrived constructs to become real characters, let alone fuel the romantic comedy engine and make an audience care much whether they end up together.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
The chief casualties are the good actors, who are forced to turn themselves into cartoons.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
You can't set the comedy bar much lower than spoofing the old Rock Hudson-Doris Day romances.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Jeff Cronenweth did the lovely cinematography. It's the only element that improves on the original material.
Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Hunter's movies never condescended to the audience; they never winked, never pretended to be a mere Playboy party joke. Which is precisely why Down With Love, which strives to be to "Pillow Talk" what "Far From Heaven" was to "All That Heaven Allows," is such a disaster: It winks so hard it lapses right into a coma.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The film is hapless. The gap between the moviemakers' ambition and their wit is dizzying. It's as if they thought they were filming The Importance of Being Unimportant.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Explicitly invites us to mock its artificiality and giggly cluelessness, but beyond its attractive shell the film rings hollow. These days, even a comedy has got to have a heart.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
The parodistic romantic comedy makes the fatal mistake of so much middlebrow satire: It becomes that which it mocks.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly David Chute
This brittle little confection from director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) may drive you up the wall -- unless you're willing to settle for great frocks, stylish production design and wicked opening credits.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
A total lack of chemistry between the stars -- neither of whom is particularly good at romantic comedy in the first place -- and you have a promising package that grows steadily less lovable as it goes along. Down with this movie!
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The plot's as thin as a debutante's cigarette case.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Down With Love has little to offer besides hip sixties references better films have already made and made infinitely more hip.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 30 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Austin A. gave it a7:
An adorable farse that will make you dazzle for just a few hours.
caroline gave it a 0:
I believe this film, is so boring. i really hate it, it is really awful. i dont need to be a critic view, to give this opinion, because it is a boring film, with a good cast, who would think it will be this kind of crap?, not me, so, i have just finished seen it, and i was so furious, i had to write something about this stupid comedy. thank you for wasting my time down with love.
George M gave it a 1:
Oh, so empty a flic... thank God for the costumes...
Natasha B. gave it a 10:
Absolutley brilliant, Ewan is at his best and so is Renee!!! It's just what we needed!!
Sam R. gave it a 9:
A well made movie unintentionally made for people who love nostalgia, and are over 50 (like me). Countless cultural references and in-jokes about late 1950's early 1960's that will go over the heads of anyone younger.
Dave B. gave it a 7:
"CRAP-TACULAR!!!"
Joe A. gave it a 2:
Boring, boring, boring.
