Down With Love

The battle of the sexes rages between a best-selling feminist author (Renée Zellweger) and a womanizing journalist (Ewan McGregor) determined to put her in her place. Writers Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake and director Peyton Reed fashion an elaborate pastiche of the old Doris Day-Rock Hudson sex farces of the 1960s, complete with David Hyde-Pierce in the Tony Randall role (plus a cameo from Randall himself, just for fun). It’s a nervy idea; those films ran their course 10 years before most of today’s moviegoers were born. The movie runs a little too long and preens too much on its cuteness—the candy-box decor and crackling risque dialogue. But it is cute, and it’s good fun most of the way. McGregor strikes that swingin’ ’60s attitude so smoothly it seems bred in his bones; he’s like a Scottish Cary Grant.