Down with Love

Down with Love
May 16, 2003
Fox
Comedy, Romance, Historical, Musical
DVD
B+

This was a box-office disappointment and there are still people who loathe it, but I find it almost as delightful as I did a dozen years ago.  It is both an over-the-top loving parody of early '60s "sex comedies" and an early 21st-century look at gender roles.  It is a rom-com but it puts surprising spins on the conventions, new and old, as with the moment when it seems like the movie could end but there's another twenty minutes or so.  The dialogue is suggestive and layered in other ways, and there's a lot of physical humor, not just slapstick but things like the stylized ways people walk and smile.

Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor are cast somewhat against both type and archetype.  That is, this is not the usual McGregor role and he's little like Rock Hudson.  Ditto for Zellweger and Doris Day.  The two supporting roles, played by Sarah Paulson and David Hyde Pierce, however, are dead on Paula Prentiss and Tony Randall, although again with little twists and surprises.  (That they're both queer in real life adds yet another layer, as in the Japanese restaurant scene.)  Randall himself, then 83 and a year away from death, has a little gem of a role as the head of the publishing company where the book of the title is ignored and then celebrated.  "Down with Love" is also a song, and music is such an integral part of the movie that I think this deserves the "musical" tag, even if not strictly speaking a musical.

The film is especially notable for the look, as seen in set design and costumes, but also in such touches as a Mad Magazine cover.  It all looks like a slightly hyped-up version of what you would've seen in a 1962 film, from opening credits to closing.  There's also creative (and suggestive) use of split-screen.  If I can't rate the movie higher, it's that it hasn't aged quite as well as I hoped.  I still really enjoy it, but I don't love it as much after multiple viewings.  And it doesn't seem quite so innovative now as it did then.

Just as he had in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and many other appearances, Will Jordan plays Ed Sullivan.  Sarah Christine Smith was a Go-Go Dancer in Austin Powers #1 and is an Astronette here.  Turtle, who was Cult Member Jeff in Dude, Where's My Car?, plays a Beatnik here.

Wet Hot American Summer

Wet Hot American Summer
January 23, 2001
Eureka Pictures
Comedy, Historical, Romance
DVD
B

This is a parody/homage to the "summer camp" movies of the late '70s and early '80s, from Meatballs on out.  Some of the time it does feel like one of those movies, but one that just somehow didn't get released for two decades.  (It's set in 1981.)  And other times it feels like a dark comedy, as seen particularly in the "going to town" montage.  Then there are the very not '80s touches, like the gay wedding.  Not everything works in the movie, but enough does.  This go-round I was most impressed with the soundtrack, with no less than three title songs, although the best song is "Higher and Higher," which is used for the training montage.

The cast has many good performers, with the best of lot probably Paul Rudd, cast against "nice guy" type as Andy the good-looking "asshole."  Not only does he insult and cheat on his girlfriend, but he lets kids drown and throws witnesses out of a moving vehicle!  I was also of course quite fond of one couple, by then thirty-six-year-old Janeane Garfolo as Beth the camp director and forty-one-year-old David Hyde Pierce as Henry Newman the astrophysics professor.

Bradley Cooper, then 25, has an early role as Ben, the gay Drama counselor, while Amy Poehler (then 29) plays the overly critical Drama counselor Susie.  This time, Molly Shannon is Gail von Kleinenstein, the Arts & Crafts counselor going through a divorce.

Director/co-writer David Wain would also write and direct a couple other Paul Rudd movies I own, Wanderlust and They Came Together (the latter pairing Rudd with Poehler).  Co-writer Michael Showalter would also co-write TCT, but he doesn't seem to appear in it, as he does here, in the dual roles of Gerald "Coop" Cooperberg and Alan Shemper.  Peter Salett, who's Guitar Dude here, would be Manfreddie in Wanderlust.  Nina Hellman, who's Nancy here, would be a Protester there.  And Michael Ian Black, who plays Ben's boyfriend McKinley, would be Trevor in TCT.

Zak Orth was Mike in In & Out, is J.J. here, and would be David Newbert in Music and Lyrics.