“Down with Love” has the right intentions; it’s a throwback to the old Kim Novak and Rock Hudson romantic comedies from the sixties; the hip, groovy, fluffy as a marshmallow, and very colorful romantic comedies were sometimes very entertaining, and while “Down with Love” has all the ingredients of a satire, this is never sure whether it really is a satire or a spoof. A satire is an amusing jab at a topic, a spoof is making fun of a topic and unfortunately, “Down with Love” jumps from one genre to the other so constantly throughout the progression of the film that it makes your head spin. Barbara Novak is a brutal young go-getter, a tough ballsy female writer for a magazine, a female pioneer in a male dominated society who has written a book called “Down with Love” which breaks down and analyzes all the tricks men pull with women, but can’t get it published.
I’m among the legions of fans who grew up on cable television watching the geniuses at “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (Don’t know it? Look it up), or as we people in the know call it “MST3K” spoof films like “The Mole People” and “The Horror at Party Beach”. Yeah, it’s official I’m a nerd. Anyway, I spent many a long day watching Servo, Crow, and Mike watch bad movies only to trash them with their witty one-liners which often made me laugh, so when I was chosen to view the newest gag film “Don’t ask Don’t Tell”, I was more than willing to discover what lay ahead of me. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is a spoof, but it also becomes its own entity in the process as a film within a film. The people at “Refried Flicks” take the 1954 junk heap “Killer’s from Space”, an old schlock science fiction film directed by legendary director Billy Wilder’s younger brother W. Lee Wilder which starred Peter Graves and re-dub it, add new comedic scenes and masterfully edit this old piece of junk.
