Suggested Film for Tonight: “Down with Love” – A Romantic Comedy with a Retro Twist

In 2003, amidst her successful streak of Oscar nominations and in between her roles in the Bridget Jones movies, Renée Zellweger starred in a colorful romantic comedy alongside Ewan McGregor. Although the film, “Down with Love,” didn’t perform well financially compared to other movies released that year, it gained a cult following for its nostalgic nod to the romantic comedies of the late 1950s and early 1960s such as “Pillow Talk.” Now, it is featured on the Criterion Channel’s February series about love stories in New York, coinciding with the release of a new Bridget Jones film on Peacock for Valentine’s Day.

Why Watch Down with Love Tonight?

During the same year, audiences were drawn to romantic comedies involving deception within the world of magazines. “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” became a hit by portraying a story where a man and a woman manipulate each other for professional gain but end up falling in love. However, the film veered away from classic screwball comedy elements by slowing down its pace, relying on gender stereotypes, and emphasizing sentimentality over wit. This approach resonated more with viewers compared to films like “Down with Love” or “Intolerable Cruelty,” which offered a more comedic and homage-filled take on screwball comedies but did not perform as well at the box office.

While “Down with Love” may not be a traditional screwball comedy, it pays homage to the semi-liberated romantic comedies of the 1950s and 1960s, akin to the films starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Directed by Peyton Reed, the film combines the speed and sass of screwball comedy with the style of 1962, allowing for more suggestive humor than its predecessors. Renée Zellweger delivers one of her standout performances as Barbara Novak, a writer promoting her book advocating women’s empowerment and casual sex in a whimsically fake New York City setting. Ewan McGregor plays Catcher Block, a charming ladies’ man who aims to uncover the truth behind Novak’s philosophy by adopting the persona of the astronaut Zip Martin. The film also features comedic subplots involving their sidekicks, played by David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson, adding to the stylized and self-aware nature of the movie.

The broad story of Down with Love is predictable, though some of its zanier turns do make a good-faith effort to keep the audience on their toes late in the game. McGregor and Zellweger have their charm dials all the way up; with musicals fresh in their respective repertoire, they still move through the picture like they could burst into song and/or dance at any time. (They finally do in a delightful end-credits sequence.) Cute as they are, the movie elicits even bigger swoons with its style, a lavish heightening of the mid-century aesthetic that audiences loved to see in Mad Men, which began some years later.

Peyton Reed, who was following up modern classic Bring It On, brings Down with Love just to the edge of spoof, and it occasionally crosses that line with wink-wink jokes that are a little easier to crack than the genuine sincerity of the movie’s unofficial source materials. For the most part, though, the movie simply revives a degree of craft not always present in romantic comedies of the early 2000s: Dialogue packed with double entendres, zingers, and one-liners; luxurious production design on potentially basic interiors like apartments and restaurants (the movie uses few if any real New York locations, but its backdropped faking of them is plenty expressive); playful costume design; gags set up not just with words but by editing and framing, sometimes in split-screen (another Pillow Talk homage). To be honest, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days could never.

Rom-com filmmaking has only gotten worse since 2003; even some of the more charming streaming offerings tend to operate in the binary of overlit, or nondescript. This makes Down with Love a throwback within a throwback: Enjoy the budgetary freedom a fun star-driven comedy received in 2003, and then enjoy how that freedom was used to evoke movies from four decades earlier. Somehow, it adds up to a movie that dates itself firmly in 1962 and also feels totally timeless.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.