Down with Love

Down with Love is a romantic comedy set in New York City in 1962. Barbara Novak, a feminist writer played by Renée Zellweger, becomes a sensation with a best-selling book arguing that women should put their careers ahead of romance and can enjoy sex without love. Her message unsettles men and delights a large female readership. Catcher Block, a womanising magazine journalist played by Ewan McGregor, is assigned to interview her but schemes instead to expose her as a fraud by making her fall for him, going so far as to pose as a shy astronaut named Zip Martin.

The film is directed by Peyton Reed, its fourth feature following The Love Bug (1997) and Bring It On (2000) and preceding The Break-Up (2006), Yes Man (2008) and three Ant-Man films. Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake wrote the screenplay, and Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks produced. The cast also includes Sarah Paulson, David Hyde Pierce, Rachel Dratch and Jack Plotnick, with 42 credited cast and 50 credited crew members.

Made on a budget of 35 million dollars, the film took about 20 million dollars worldwide, so it did not recover its costs in cinemas. Ratings sit in the middle range: 6.3 out of 10 on IMDb from around 47,000 votes, 6.1 out of 10 on TMDB from 811 votes, and a critics' rating of 6.4 out of 10 from 175 reviews, close to the audience scores at both sites.