Down with Love
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| Down with Love | |
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 Down with Love movie poster |
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| Directed by | Peyton Reed |
| Produced by | Paddy Cullen |
| Written by | Eve Ahlert Dennis Drake |
| Starring | Ewan McGregor Renée Zellweger David Hyde Pierce Sarah Paulson |
| Music by | Marc Shaiman |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | May 16, 2003 |
| Running time | 94 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Down with Love is a 2003 American romantic comedy film.
An homage to the films made by Rock Hudson and Doris Day in the late 1950s and early 1960s, most notably Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back, it tells the story of Barbara Novak, a farm girl from Maine who finds fame and fortune as the author of Down with Love, a book that urges women to become liberated from male domination by giving up on love and substituting chocolate for physical pleasure. Ace reporter Catcher Block (McGregor), a playboy in the classic sense, sets out to expose her as a fraud, and invents an alter ego, astronaut Zip Martin, to seduce her. In a sub-plot, Novak's garrulous editor and publicist, Vikki Hiller, and Catcher's naïve, insecure best friend and boss Peter MacMannus, provide comic relief as they struggle to engage in a romantic fling of their own.
Released in the United States on May 9, 2003, the film, written by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake and directed by Peyton Reed, stars Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson, Rachel Dratch, and Jeri Ryan. Tony Randall, a mainstay of the Hudson-Day romps, appears in a small role as the owner of Novak's publishing house. It proved to be his final film performance.
The sets, costumes, cinematography, editing, score, opening credits, and special effects, including split-screen shots during phone calls heavily laced with double entendres between the two leads, are carefully designed to give the impression that the movie was actually shot in 1962, even to the extent of digitally recreating the New York City skyline and developing a greenscreen technique simulating cheesy 1960s rear projection. While the plot reflects the attitudes and behavior of the early, pre-sexual revolution Sixties, the film has an anachronistic subtext driven by more modern, post-feminist ideas and attitudes. The script mixes early 21st Century ideas with the type of light-hearted banter that dominated films of the early 1960s.
[edit] Trivia
- The musical number seen during the closing credits (and in its entirety on the DVD release) was a last-minute addition to the film. Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman appear in the number as the bartender and the pianist.
- The script includes a reference to CinemaScope, a now defunct widescreen process introduced in the 1950s, developed and owned by 20th Century Fox, the studio that released the film.
[edit] Soundtrack
- Kissing A Fool (Album Version) — Michael Bublé
- For Once In My Life (Album Version) — Michael Bublé
- Down With Love (Album Version) — Michael Bublé and Holly Palmer
- Barbara Arrives (Album Version) — Marc Shaiman
- Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words) (Count Basie And His Orchestra) (Album Version) — Frank Sinatra
- One Mint Julep (Album Version) — Xavier Cugat And His Orchestra
- Girls Night Out (Album Version) — Marc Shaiman
- Everyday Is A Holiday With You (Album Version) — Esthero
- Barbara Meets Zip (Album Version) — Marc Shaiman
- Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words) (Album Version) — Astrud Gilberto
- Love in Three Acts (Album Version) — Marc Shaiman
- Here's To Love (Album Version) — Renée Zellweger and Ewan Mcgregor
