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Back to the Fifties, I mean Sixties
by Joe De Matteo

Super

Down With Love brought me back in time to movie going with my mother and sister, and those late nights in the early 1970s watching old movies on one of the nightly, much after prime-time, movie programs like “The Late Show.” 

Actors like Doris Day, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Cesar Romero, and even Jimmy Cagney took you through that basic “boy meets girl… plot-line.  Even though there weren’t any great car chases, the eternal boy/girl chase was entertaining enough to keep me watching.

Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor are both excellent in their rolls; they play off each other well and have nailed the look of the period.  As a matter of fact, I can’t think of anyone in the film who wasn’t right for their part. 

Director Peyton Reed has captured all the qualities of the Romanic Comedy genre; the movie has both the right feel and the right cadence.  Most importantly, it doesn’t ignore who and in what time period it’s moviegoers are.  I feel that Down With Love will hook many young moviegoers on this classic genre, and that movie rentals for RC films of the 50s will serge. 

Yes, there have been Romantic Comedies produced all along.  When Harry Met Sally was a great one.  The difference is that they were contemporary, Down With Love brings us back to 50s/early 60s era of Romantic Comedy. That’s what makes Down With Love so irresistible.  There was a fairy tale quality to the movies of that era.  The writers and directors didn’t let the horrors of the world break into the story.  Hey, does the word escapism mean anything to you?  They were about glamorous people doing glamorous things.  The perfect comparison to make my point is Moonstruck (Cher, Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello), which took place in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, with Dream Wife (1953, Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Walter Pidgeon); Forget Paris (Billy Crystal, Debra Winger) with High Society (1956, Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra).

It certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing to have more new Romantic Comedies produced with great actors and directors.  Hey, how about this: it’s 1956 and a famous movie idol, Kurt Russell, gives up his career to marry Goldie Hawn, whose idea of the perfect life is living on a Virginia horse farm.  Cameron Diaz is the night-life loving neighbor whose husband, Nicolas Cage, a State Department type, who is always off somewhere putting out political fires.  Can’t you just see the big cars, big dresses and wide lapels?

Yes!

Down With Love is a Yes, a go see.