Down with the clones

When
I was about eight or nine, my dad got sick for the first time I could remember
— I think it was the Hong Kong Flu or something. I remember being pretty
concerned, seeing him abed all day in a fairly weakened state. But then, a few
days into the illness, he perked up when Pillow
Talk came on television. At the time, that didn’t strike me as being
particularly odd.

            I just got out of a screening of Down
With Love, which is meant to be a throwback to those old Rock
Hudson/Doris Day films from 40 years ago (they made three pictures between 1959
and 1964, and Pillow Talk was the most
popular). Now, with 20/20 hindsight, I realize my dad must have been sicker
than I thought, because Love is
harebrained and insufferable, and it completely misses the line between camp
and crap. Apparently there’s a good reason why they don’t make movies like this
anymore.

            Love is the perfect counter-programming for movie lovers who don’t want to see The Matrix Reloaded. Essentially, Love is a film about sex, particularly
pussy, although it, uh, pussyfoots around that dreaded word by using supposedly
clever double entendres.

            Love
borrows much more from Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl than anything with Rock or Doris (aside
from the producers digging up their 83-year-old co-star, Tony Randall, for a
cameo here). It’s set in 1963 Manhattan, where farmer’s daughter/librarian
Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger) has just arrived from Maine, on the eve of the
printing of her first book. The book, also called Down With Love, preaches female empowerment in a world where men
still say things like, “That woman thinks she has a mind of her own.”
It’s an instant hit, heralding the genesis of the sexual revolution.

            This presents two problems. For
Barbara, it means she can’t get any guys to come near her, because they all
hate her and the unexpected repercussions of her book. For ladies’ man Catcher
Block (Ewan McGregor) — the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from Know magazine, who Barbara outs on
national television as an unmitigated womanizer — it means his never-ending
trail of tail has dried up.

            So Catch assumes an alter ego to woo
Barbara, in hopes of turning the experience into the greatest magazine piece in
the history of the world. Meanwhile, there’s a subplot involving the romance
between their editors (played by David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson). This is
just stupid, as it’s so obvious the editors just want to sleep with their
writers. Pierce playing a guy who isn’t sure if he’s straight? Groundbreaking
cinema, that.

            On the plus side, this is, like, the
fourth film in a row where McGregor manages to keep Ewan, Jr. in his pants. As
talented an actress as Zellweger is (I think she should have won Best Actress
the last two years), in Love she’s
merely a clothes hanger for an endless parade of crazy duds. Kudos to the folks
who designed the sets and costumes, but whoever was responsible for the score
(or the insane decision to crank it up that loud) should be taken out back and
shot. The old-school Fox and Cinemascope logos were a nice touch, as was the
scene in which director Peyton Reed (Bring
It On) combines Pillow Talk‘s
infamous split-screen with Austin Powers‘
(near) nude scenes.

            What is unforgivable, though, are
writers Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake (of the upcoming Legally Blonde sequel) and their groan-worthy attempts at snappy
dialogue that constantly fall flat. And just when you think you’ve made it
through the whole stupid thing without that big song-and-dance number (because
it’s apparently a contractual obligation at this point for McGregor and
Zellweger to do one in every film), there it is, during the closing credits.
Anyone who sticks around until the end deserves every last second of it.

There’s
one particular part of Patricio Guzmán’s documentary The Pinochet Case (screens Friday, May 16, at the Dryden) that seems like a spoof cooked up by
Michael Moore and Christopher Guest. In the scene, former British Prime Minster
Margaret Thatcher meets with former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who is
under house arrest in England for scores of human rights violations. Thatcher
graciously praises Pinochet for “bringing democracy to Chile,” which
is quite a hoot, considering the general gained power in his country via a
US-backed coup that overthrew democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende
back in 1973. (In the controversial festival short collection 11’09’01, Brit filmmaker Ken Loach
points out that this coup happened on September 11.) No, she’s not kidding, and
she never asks why his amps go up to 11, either.

            The rest of Case isn’t that bone-chillingly ironic. Essentially, Guzmán’s doc
is two separate films: One deals with the massive struggle to re-try Pinochet
for the horrible stuff he did (over 3,000 were murdered under his reign, and a
million more went into exile), while the other features heartbreaking
interviews with the loved ones of the many people who were tortured and/or
killed. The gruesome details of the latter aren’t exactly the stuff of
cinematic dreams, but it sure makes for an effective and persuasive
documentary.

            Aside from stumbling over some
clunky visual metaphors — especially the repeated use of a chess board and
pieces — Guzmán does a decent job of telling a story many outside Chile
simply don’t know. In a way, Case can
be considered a fourth chapter to Guzmán’s three-part epic, The Battle Of Chile.

Interested
in raw, unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com), or
listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.

This article appears in May 14-20, 2003.