I have discovered the next Broadway hit.
It happened last night, quite by accident, while I was still basking in the glow of Sunday’s incredibly entertaining Tony Awards. (A lineup of stellar performances + The Book of Mormon’s awards domination + the incomparable Neil Patrick Harris = GREATNESS.)
I plopped down on the couch for an evening of sloth, and what did I find on HBO?
Down with Love
Did you see it? This 2003 romantic comedy was an homage to the 1960′s sex comedies starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
In Down with Love, Renee Zellweger plays a bestselling author who advises her readers to ‘give up men,’ a credo much at odds with journalist Ewan McGregor’s playboy lifestyle. The two get involved in a relationship that is not what it appears. Hilarity ensues.
I love this movie. The script is smart and funny and filled with double entendres. (These are my people.) In one scene, the two leads work out separately yet together via split-screen; the effect is very, very naughty.
The costumes and set design are amazing as well. The characters live in a New York City that alternates between cotton candy pastels and race car brights, not unlike the world imagined in this year’s Broadway smash How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.
I imagine Down with Love as a musical; the movie was not, although Zellweger and McGregor did sing the title song over the movie credits. And both can sing.
Oh, to have Ewan McGregor on Broadway. Tony-winner David Hyde Pierce was in the movie version as well.
This may be my best idea to date. Let’s bring Down with Love to the Great White Way!
Lovesick
When I typically partake in a movie double feature — like I did Sunday — I vary the genre. A comedy paired with a thriller. A romance with a drama. A documentary followed by a sci-fi.
But yesterday?
I double downed on romance. Figured these two particular films were so completely different, they couldn’t possibly overlap.
Shows what I know.
Pretty much all of us are a little crazy, right? That’s why this movie works. It’s funny and it’s real and it manages to work in a reference to Dancing with the Stars….how can it miss?
Clearly the costumes are much better. (Cooper wore a garbage bag for much of Playbook.) And director Joe Wright placed his actors on an actual stage for many scenes, which I found brilliant but distracting.
But Anna and her oh-so-good-looking lover are indeed crazy. Most of the people in the story are varying shades of crazy, too. And there is a long scene of ballroom dancing that is also integral to the storyline.
But alas, no silver lining.
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Posted in Celebrities, Commentary, Entertainment, Humor, Movies
Tagged Anna Karenina, ballroom dancing, Bradley Cooper, celebrities, commentary, crazy for love, Dancing with the Stars, double feature, entertainment, Humor, Jennifer Lawrence, Joe Wright, just what the doctor ordered, lovesick, movie costumes, movie director, movie genres, Movies, Robert DeNiro, romance movies, Silver Linings Playbook