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.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

I Wanna Hold Your Hand
April 21, 1978
Universal
Comedy, Musical, Historical
VHS
B-

This is an uneven but likable look at Beatlemania, covering roughly 24 hours, including the Fab Four's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Except for some vintage footage and their songs on the soundtrack, we never actually see or hear the Beatles, but just catch glimpses of them.  The movie is from the perspective of eight teens (four girls and four guys), who have various misadventures in New York as they attempt to see the live performance.

My favorite moments are with 19-year-old Wendie Jo Sperber (later of Bosom Buddies), as the biggest fan out of the group from Jersey.  She meets her match in 21-year-old Eddie Deezen, who was sort of the go-to nerd in comedy movie casting for about a decade and would shortly appear in Grease.  (He seems to be quite the Beatles fan in real life, judging from his website:  http://www.eddiedeezen.com/beatles/.)  The two of them have an insane, adorkable energy separately but especially together.  The other plots and subplots vary in quality, but it's surprising that this was such a flop for Robert Zemeckis.  It's a cute little movie, which has ironically aged better than many of its contemporaries.  (And, yes, I feel that the changes between '64 and '78 warrant the "historical" tag.)

Dick Miller plays a policeman, as he did in Beach Ball.  Nick Pellegrino, "Lou the Guard," was one of The Big Bus's passengers.  Marc McClure, who plays Larry, was Annabel's crush Boris in Freaky Friday.  Bartender Bob Maroff was in Annie Hall.

Ironically, Jeffrey Weissman, who's a Ringo fan here, would be a "brainwashed youth" in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Gene LeBell, who's "Theater Core RTTST" (whatever that means), would be the referee in Americathon.  Leslie Hoffman would be in The Nude Bomb.  Poppy Lagos, who's a reporter here, would be "Sister" in Going Ape!, while Luke Andreas, who's the bribable police officer in the alley, would be "Carter" in that movie.  Will Jordan was an Ed Sullivan impersonator for four decades, and he wouldn't look much different in Down with Love a quarter century after this movie.

Sperber, Deezen, and Paul Newman's daughter