'Down With Love' successful tribute to 1960s sex comedies

Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

From the opening credits featuring the old 20th Century Fox "CinemaScope" logo to the end titles, Peyton Reed's new film "Down With Love" is a perfectly executed homage to the "sophisticated sex comedies" of the 1960s.

It most notably recalls the three films that featured Doris Day and Rock Hudson "Pillow Talk," "Send Me No Flowers" and "Lover Come Back."

While it's hard to say whether the film can stand on its own merits to viewers who aren't aware of the genre it is striving to emulate, for aficionados it's a pleasurable confection wrapped in all of the colors, music, split-screen scenes and sexual innuendo that were the hallmarks of the original films.

In the 1960s, sexual innuendo had to be very discreet, and Reed has a lot more freedom of expression here in the new millennium. He rarely exploits it, though, and when he does most notably in the split-screen scene featuring push-ups and overt placement of the lead characters he does so with a kind hand and tongue placed firmly in his cheek.

"Pillow Talk" would never have passed the censors' board with the (in these days quite innocent) scenes Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor share via the magic of the split screen in "Down With Love."

Zellweger plays Barbara Novak, or rather Zellweger plays Doris Day playing Barbara Novak. She's a New England-based writer who in the dawning of the age of "The Pill" and the women's liberation movement has just written a book extolling the pleasures of casual sex without the baggage of emotional attachment. While this subject, at this point in time, was a given for men, Barbara's book was about female casual sex.

When she comes to New York to meet with her publishers, she finds they are less than enthusiastic about promoting her book. They are, after all, a menagerie of stuffy, middle-aged men who find the premise of her book as baffling as it is threatening. Barbara will get no help from this group.

Her editor on the other hand is a woman; a "modern" woman who is 100 percent behind "Down With Love" and its entire philosophy. Vikki Hiller, played by Sarah Paulson, is the character that would have been played by Lauren Bacall in the Day/Hudson films.

Vikki has a brilliant idea to get promotion for the book. She arranges an interview with Know, a men's magazine. Know's most famous writer is Catcher Block, played by Ewan McGregor in what would have been the Rock Hudson role. Block is a "man's man, a woman's man ... a man about town" and is as famous, or infamous as it were, for his exposes as he is for his charm and unabashed womanizing.

The first planned meeting between Barbara and Catcher is a wash out, so is the second ... and the third. Director Reed utilizes the split-screen approach here to great effect and McGregor and Zellweger show they've done their homework in scenes that are on par with the originals they are striving to recreate.

After being brushed aside by Catcher Block and Know, Barbara and Vikki mount an alternate attack. With the help of "The Ed Sullivan Show" and a brilliant (it's the real thing) performance by Judy Garland, "Down With Love" hits the No. 1 spot, and women across the country join the revolution.

This is much to the ire of men in general and Catcher Block in particular. He devises a scheme wherein he poses as an astronaut laden with "traditional values," and he sets about on the seduction of Barbara. He's not trying to seduce her sexually the point of her book is that women can, and should, have sex when and how often they please but rather emotionally. Catcher wants Barbara to fall in love with him, and he will then expose her as a traitor to her own cause.

Things go somewhat awry as is usually the case in screwball romantic comedies.

The third act begins with a really big twist. To give it away would be a disservice to the viewer, but suffice it to say the remainder of the film takes on a different approach because of the revelation.

In the scene that begins act three, the camera holds tight on Zellweger as she explains to Catcher (and us) what is really going on. The writing, the cadence of the words and the actress's performance are reason enough to see "Down With Love."

No other actress working today could pull off the role Zellweger plays here, and McGregor is on the money as well.

The "Austin Powers" series has parodied the James Bond films of the 1960s, but "Down With Love" is not making light of its predecessors. It's a loving and technically brilliant tribute.

Viewers who remember the films "Down With Love" is striving to recall will be pleasantly satisfied. Those without a clue will probably enjoy it as well, but may not grasp why it is so much better than might first be apparent.