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Down with Love
The 20th Century Fox Film Corporation
FILM:
MPAA 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)
| GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Eve Ahlert
Dennis Drake
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Peyton Reed
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 7, 2003
Video: October 7, 2003
Theatrical: May 9, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
100 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
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...
100
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.
89
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.
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A postfeminist valentine to the Paleolithic days of Woman Power when dinosaurs walked Manhattan in heels with matching handbags.
83
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.
80
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.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
No better or worse than the movies that inspired it, but that is a compliment, I think.
75
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.
75
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.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Light, funny, and clever.
75
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
This is all far beyond silly, of course - the most inconsequential sort of winking, meta-movie in-joke.
70
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.
70
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.
63
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?
63
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.
63
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.
60
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]
60
Village Voice
Laura Sinagra
Unfortunately, during the inevitable "what every woman wants" breakdown, Zellweger can't muster Doris Day's detached fume.
60
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It's like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch on a $60 million budget.
58
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
An irritation, more fizzle than sizzle.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
50
Slate
David Edelstein
The chief casualties are the good actors, who are forced to turn themselves into cartoons.
40
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
You can't set the comedy bar much lower than spoofing the old Rock Hudson-Doris Day romances.
40
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Jeff Cronenweth did the lovely cinematography. It's the only element that improves on the original material.
40
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.
40
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
It’s all strenuously camp.
38
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.
38
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.
30
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
The parodistic romantic comedy makes the fatal mistake of so much middlebrow satire: It becomes that which it mocks.
30
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.
25
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!
25
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The plot's as thin as a debutante's cigarette case.
10
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.
 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.
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