The bright, glossy world of Doris Day and Rock Hudson sex comedies gets a self-aware brush-up in Down with Love. Pillow-lipped Renée Zellweger plays Barbara Novak, the author of a bestselling book called Down with Love that advises women to focus on their careers and have sex à la carte--just like a man would. Determined to prove that Novak is just as vulnerable to love as any woman, dashingly chauvinist magazine writer Catcher Block (ever-charming Ewan McGregor) pretends to be a courtly astronaut who wouldn't dream of putting his hand on a woman's knee. This piffle of a story seems like nothing more than an excuse for ironic double-entendres and dazzling production design, until a sneaky plot twist suddenly raises the stakes for the movie's end. As he always does, the brilliant David Hyde Pierce scores the most comic points as Block's fussy editor. --Bret Fetzer