in 2003, Hollywood created a pin-point recreation of those early 1060s Doris Day features called “Down with Love.” Few people paid to see it. Maybe they figured they could rent the real deal at the video shop. Or, they saw through the charade.
Now, we’re treated to a valentine to those screwball comedies of the 1940s with “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” and I expect it’ll enjoy a similar fate. The immaculately groomed film, out on DVD Aug. 19, tries so hard to turn back time you half expect a digitized Jimmy Stewart to make a cameo.
“Pettigrew” stars the great Frances McDormand as a mousy governess named Guinevere Pettigrew unjustly fired from her job. Broke and homeless, she’s loitering in a train station when she learns of a woman seeking a social secretary. So Miss Pettigrew poses as the secretary applicant herself.
The woman in question, Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), needs plenty of help with her social life. She’s bouncing between three suitors, one of whom might as well be wearing a “Pick Me” sign he’s so right for her. But poor, befuddled Delysia can’t make any decision, let alone the right one. Good thing Miss Pettigrew is on the scene.
Adams does her best Marilyn Monroe here, but she has enough inner depth to light up even the dimmest bulbs. But the characters here remain too diffuse for us to embrace. As a style exercise, it’s hard to top “Miss Pettigrew.” But the film lacks the soul of its inspiration.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You mentioned “Down with Love”?
As someone who grew up in the 50s and a big fan of movies like “Sex and the Single Girl”, I was expecting something similar in “Down With Love”. Unfortunately, what I found was self righteous, revisionist “satire” which requires being fully on board with post modern prejudices and mythology to actually enjoy it. The movie is rife with scenes like huge billowing clouds of cigarette smoke emerging from elevators and women editors at publishing companies who routinely act as the coffee serving girls for their bosses.
Chuck Jones once said that you can’t effectively satirize something unless you love it. Clearly the folks who did this movie find the period as politically primative as they arrogantly think their own enlightened. That makes for a movie which can be fully enjoyed only by like minded individuals or those utterly ignorant of the realities of the past.
Scott Holleron’s review was scathing: “As is often the case, the movie’s trailer is a complete fraud. The audience is invited into a colorful world with the promise of a light, witty romance and, instead, is pulverized with a sense of humor ripped from an episode of the Simpsons, South Park or Beavis and Butthead. Projecting the vulgar sensibility of Austin Powers on the innocent early 1960s, Down with Love is down on love.”
I couldn’t agree more.
K — your Chuck Jones quote is illuminating … thanks for the perceptive comment. I wonder if the TV show “Mad Men” falls into a similar category …