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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Reviews: Down with Love

Down with love! Well, down with love that doesn’t involve Ewan McGregor. That’s the conclusion I came to by watching “Down With Love” (Twentieth Century Fox). While the movie is cute and entertaining, it is carried by its star power. The dreamy McGregor and his hint of a Scottish brogue will make the women in the audience melt, while the endearing Renee Zellweger will charm the men into enjoying a “chick flick.”

Most romantic comedies don’t leave the audience wondering – you can guess the ending just from watching a preview. However, ever since “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” the possibility of a surprise ending brings you back for more. I won’t tell you what happens at the end of this flick, but I will say that “Down With Love” is not the movie I thought it would be.

Zellweger plays Barbara Novak, a librarian from Maine who dives into the big city of New York in 1963 to promote her new book, “Down With Love.” Novak’s book is a “how to” guide for women, teaching them how to forget about love until they can master equality in the workforce. Novak advises that women should turn to chocolate to ease their sexual frustration until they are equal to men in the workforce. Only then will they be able to enjoy sex as men do – a la carte. Essentially, Novak says women can have it all – without love.

McGregor plays Catcher Block, a top men’s magazine journalist and the most well-known ladies’ man in New York. Block is determined to bring Novak down, by writing a cover story about her and trying to make her fall in love. McGregor is complemented well by David Hyde Pierce’s depiction of Block’s neurotic editor Peter MacMannus.

“Down With Love” offers a colorful, boisterous 1960s style with over-the-top, swanky music and an exaggerated portrayal of femininity.

As the movie is about love, sex and ambition, each scene’s dialogue is shamelessly dripping with sexual innuendo. It’s not quite at the “Sex and the City” level, but “Down With Love” isn’t the type of movie you’d necessarily see with your mother. Instead, check it out with a date or a group of friends, and have fun!

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