It stars Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor and is a pastiche of the early-1960s American "no-sex sex comedies",[4] such as Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back (both starring Rock Hudson, Doris Day, and Tony Randall) and the "myriad spawn"[5] of derivative films that followed; Time film critic Richard Corliss wrote that Down with Love "is so clogged with specific references to a half-dozen Rock-and-Doris-type comedies that it serves as definitive distillation of the genre.
[7] In 1962, aspiring author Barbara Novak arrives in New York to promote her book, Down with Love, to Banner House publishing.
Barbara and Vikki persuade Judy Garland to sing "Down with Love" on The Ed Sullivan Show to promote the book.
The breaking point comes as Barbara appears on a national TV show and discusses a chapter from her book—"The Worst Kind of Man"—and cites Catcher Block as the perfect example, causing the women he dates to reject him.
As "Zip" takes her to fashionable New York locations, he maintains sexual tension by feigning naiveté and a desire to remain chaste until he is "ready" for a physical relationship.
Even his exposé, which he wrote on how falling in love with her made him a better man, is ruined now that Barbara has told her story in her own magazine, Now.
[2] Though the film was highly anticipated,[13] it performed far below box office expectations in comparison with other rom-coms released in the same year, such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Something's Gotta Give, both of which grossed over $100 million.
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert spoke of the film fairly positively, saying parts were "fun" and describing Zellweger's speech at the end as "a torrent of words [pouring] out from her character's innermost soul".
[10] A. O. Scott in The New York Times praised director "Reed's buoyant homage", Zellweger's Doris Day-like ability to "swivel engagingly between goofiness and sex appeal", McGregor's Sinatra-like "wiry, wolfish energy" and screenwriters Ahlert's and Drake's "canny cocktail of period vernacular and deliberately labored double entendres", finding the movie "intelligent and amusing" with "a glorious, hectic artificiality".
Hardly a trifle, Down With Love distills 40 years of sexual politics into 100 minutes, using the romantic-comedy conventions of an earlier time to comment on the governing social assumptions of yesterday—and today, as well...
[17] Richard Corliss of Time admired Orlandi's costumes and Laws' design for their "giddily precise exaggeration" and wrote that the script "has a gentle heart to humanize its sharp sitcom wit," advising his readers to "stay for the movie's denouement: a two-minute speech that wraps up the plot like Christmas ribbons around a time bomb".
But he found the film to be "miscast at the top" and "conflicted about its subject—it both derides and adores what it means to parody" and that director "Reed often uses a gong where chimes would do."
[25] In 2023, Beatrice Loayza of The New York Times wrote of the film’s cult following, saying "its meta-referential charms" have been embraced by a "younger generation…that better understands the role-playing nature of gender and romantic courtship…The film mocks, but it also transports with its eye-candy visuals and coy performances, reminding us that a suspension of reason is required to perform gender, to be sucked into a rom-com and, even, to fall in love.
"[7] The film's title comes from the song "Down with Love" as sung by Judy Garland, who is seen singing it on The Ed Sullivan Show in one scene.
[26] The song "Here's to Love" sung by Zellweger and McGregor during the closing credits (and in its entirety on the DVD release as a special feature) was a last-minute addition to the film.
According to the DVD commentary, it was added at the suggestion of McGregor, who pointed out the opportunity the filmmakers had to unite the stars of two recently popular musical films (his Moulin Rouge!