Down With Love Review

Even if you don't remember the days when Technicolor was big and Doris Day was the top box office babe, you'll still enjoy Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger's nostalgic new rom-com - just for its dreamy depiction of the Swinging Sixties if for nothing else. All garish colours, enormous hats and projected backdrops, it's a set and costume designer's dream as Zellweger's feminist author lands in New York in 1963 to publicise her revolutionary new book "Down with Love," a bible of female empowerment that soon rocks the whole world let alone Manhattan. It's a change that McGregor's playboy journo for one isn't too happy about, so the calculating Casanova sets out on a dastardly plan to catch out the gal at her own game and make her fall hopelessly and completely in love.

An unusual and sparkly take on romantic comedy, "Down with Love" should groan under the weight of unrealistic nostalgia but manages to skip along with a brightness that even Doris Day would envy. It looks perfect down to the last fake eyelash while Zellweger with her squinty-eyed innocence is brilliantly cast and Frasier's David Hyde Pierce does wonders as the hero's weary sidekick. Only with Ewan McGregor does the strain start to show as his supposedly debonair Don Juan ends up unfortunately smacking more of Jerry Lewis than Cary Grant. Mannered it may be, but approach "Down with Love" with the same light and fluffy attitude as its makers and it'll be a sweet confection to savour. And Zellweger's hilarious final exposition speech isn't half bad too.