t often looks so easy, so playful or carefree, but the romantic comedy must be the most difficult film genre to pull off with any degree of wit or intelligence. Most of them fail because they’re steeped in nauseating levels of treacle, earnestness, and cornball hammer-on-nail melodrama. With bedroom comedy homage Down With Love there are no such fears. The filmmakers know the material that inspired it is weak at best. Maybe that’s a copout of sorts, but when a stylish movie aims at playfulness, familiarity, and the ever-so-slight upsetting of expectations as its goals, it’s to be expected. Thankfully then, the film hits all three of its targets, while everyone involved manages the biological impossibility of keeping their tongues lodged in their cheeks and maintaining winning smiles.


The film’s plot revolves around the professional and personal rivalry between star magazine writer and famed bon vivant Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) and designer-outfitted feminist self-help/motivational author Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger). One is a ladies man, while the other has a sex-as-weapon approach that aims to get women’s heads out of the clouds and into the books or the boardrooms.


Yeah, never mind the who, what, when, where, and how- they don’t matter much. The film isn’t about arriving at the destination, but enjoying the journey—and looking good along the way. In this battle of the sexes— a bedroom comedy pastiche that effortlessly apes the era as much as it does those films— the watchwords are fun and frivolity. There is no need to fretfully toe the line between camp and homage as Todd Haynes’ rich, powerful Sirkian melodrama Far From Heaven did—Down With Love gleefully cha-chas over that line into quite different territory.


In what is quite rare for a romantic comedy, a film literate viewer will find more to enjoy because the plot and certain scenes neatly mirror the travails and archetypes of classic Doris Day/Rock Hudson films. The film follows a serpentine path of deceit, mistaken identity, sex, upscale mod fashion, the odd sight gag, fashion, exotica, sex, and even a bit of sex. And when one’s lips aren’t attached to another pair of lips, they’re entertaining a martini or a cigarette. The only things more common than cigarette smoke in Down With Love are double entendres.


When we first see Block he’s a mile of smiles in a white sport jacket sashaying down a helicopter ladder and bidding au revoir to busty triplets. Despite such company, he’s still managed to land a top investigative report—his charm and natural talent are matched by his diligence, you see. He may be a pretty face, but given the chance he delivers. Nearly as pretty is Zellweger, continuing to tighten her viselike grip on the America’s Sweetheart roles that Reese Witherspoon hasn’t yet grown into. Adding to the casting coups is David Hyde Pierce, note-perfect in the “Tony Randall role” of Block’s boss and confidant, a neurotic effete clinging to the coattails of his far more assured companion.


Like the early 1960s bedroom comedies, this is truly a star vehicle: Were McGregor and Zellweger not so effortlessly watchable and in tune with both their craft and the film’s tone, it would be unbearable. As it stands, it still could be intolerable for anyone not interested in stylish genre exercise or the personalities of the film’s stars. For those open to its charms, however, the film effortlessly skips along with a wink and nod and gets a few smiles and laughs along the way.