A creamy, dreamy, Technicolor look with just the right touch of artifice. Chic, over-the-top clothes and sets. Renee Zellweger (whom I mostly like) and Ewan McGregor (whom I took seriously again after Moulin Rouge) playing Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Sounds like a delightful pop confection. So why, then, is Down With Love such a frequently torturous experience?

It’s 1962, and fledgling author Barbara Novak (Zellweger) is about to publish her first book, Down with Love, a sort of Sex and the Single Girl “how-to” guide that encourages women to enjoy sex the way men do — without the entanglement of love.

After a plug (so to speak) from Ed Sullivan, Down With Love zooms to the top of the best-seller list. But sexist Know magazine reporter Catcher Block (McGregor) doesn’t take the author seriously, and repeatedly stands her up for a cover story. The joke is on the womanizing journalist when he finds out she’s kind of cute (somehow he’s managed to avoid seeing a single photo of her during her media blitz). Like the Rock Hudson character in Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back, Catcher realizes the only way he’s going to be able to woo and bed her is to adopt a new identity, in this case Zip Martin, upstanding, virginal astronaut who hasn’t had sex since his last orbit.

A good start, but Down With Love just can’t seem to get it right for more than a few minutes at a time. Aside from Marc Shaiman’s insistent, annoyingly creampuff score, the patchwork script by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake is an unnecessarily potty-mouthed take (more or less) on the 1959 Doris Day-Rock Hudson classic, Pillow Talk (which won a Best Screenplay Oscar). “Sex comedy” send-up or no, references to oral sex (distastefully simulated via split-screen), big breasts (“get a load of those rockets!”), and large penises (Catcher’s “powerful instrument” turns out to be a telescope) are beneath a film that seeks to pay homage to Hudson and the criminally underrated Day, especially considering the film’s PG-13 rating.

Peyton Reed’s direction is the movie’s biggest liability: clunky, obvious and lacking genuine comic timing. (Bring It On, on the other hand, worked.) He encourages Ewan (whose Scottish accent repeatedly seeps through) to act like James Bond one moment, then Dean Martin the next, squeezing out all his charm when he usually has charm to burn. (It’s not until he adopts the guise of Zip Martin that he’s any good, frankly.) He asks Zellweger to sashay about like Mamie Van Doren, allowing her to consistently emote with her cheeks and lips, the way Ali MacGraw used to act with her nostrils. Save for a difficult three-minute monologue she delivers with aplomb, her performance is often an embarrassment, unworthy of her Chicago triumph. (What a difference a talented director makes, eh?) Reed fares better with Sarah Paulson (delightful as Vikki, Barbara’s editor), David Hyde Pierce (funny in the Tony Randall role) and Jeri Ryan (smashing as a English flight attendant). Tony Randall, who co-starred in all three of Day-Hudson’s movies, makes a rare cameo appearance.

Down With Love has the right look, as well as a smattering of funny moments (such as when Catcher says, in a clever role-reversal moment, “I don’t want to have sex anymore, I want to get married!”) and a frothy end-credits song (“Here’s to Love”) worth staying for. But overall it’s too heavy-handed, too taken with itself. It constantly strains to be clever — often without being clever at all. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but we all know the difference between ice milk and Haagen-Daz.

Down With Love is currently playing citywide.

According to the fascinating, intelligently observed Owning Mahowny (based on actual events that occurred in 1982), every man has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life. Publicly, Dan Mahowny (a superb Philip Seymour Hoffman, redeeming himself after the awful Love Liza) is a trusted assistant bank manager in Toronto. Privately, he is dating fellow employee Belinda (Minnie Driver, who almost looks as if she is in disguise). Secretly, he is a compulsive gambler who is embezzling millions of dollars to fuel his out-of-control addiction.

We’ve seen plenty of stories about gamblers, but writer Maurice Chauvet (working from a book by Gary Ross) and director Richard Kwietniowski put a new spin on the genre by making fate Dan’s partner in crime. Each time he’s about to get busted, something happens that allows Dan to continue pilfering funds and hitting the tables in Atlantic City, under the curious, watchful eye of casino manager Victor Foss (John Hurt), who courts him like royalty. A few flaws aside, Owning Mahowny is smart and engaging. (Landmark’s Hillcrest Cinemas)

For a much-hyped “event” movie, Matrix Reloaded, written and directed by the Wachowski Brothers (geniuses or techno-hacks?), is a non-event, a costly artistic flop that can’t touch the original (which, if nothing else, had exciting, fresh visuals). Take away the amusing, if overdone, fight scene that pits Keanu Reeves (or a CGI facsimile — who can tell the difference?) against 100 Hugo Weavings; and the impressive, if joyless, 14-minute car chase that serves as the film’s centerpiece, and you’re left with a cold, soulless 138-minute Ray-Bans commercial full of pseudo-profundities (“We’re all here to do what we’re here to do”), robotic acting and overly busy special FX. When Anthony Zerbe says, “There’s no point,” he isn’t kidding. Matrix Revolutions? (That’s Part Three of the trilogy, to be released in November, in case you’re over 15.) As movie producer Sam Goldwyn once said, “Gentlemen, include me out.” (citywide)

With the late Federico Fellini being honored this year at Cannes, the timing would seem perfect for a new documentary honoring the peerless Italian director. But Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, by Damian Pettigrew, doesn’t measure up to its subject, even with commentary (recorded in 1983) by the filmmaker himself (mostly philosophical twaddle that reveals nothing), rare footage (Fellini and a young Marcello Mastroianni on the set of La Dolce Vita) and enticingly blunt interviews (Casanova’s Donald Sutherland calls him a “dictator,” while Toby Dammit star Terence Stamp likens him to a puppeteer). Interview subjects talk without us knowing who they are; film clips — often used to little effect — aren’t identified. If you appreciate Fellini, you’ll likely be entertained, but you won’t be satisfied. (May 23-29 at Landmark’s Ken Cinema)

Kyle Counts is film critic for the Gay and Lesbian Times. He is currently working with Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales to get Doris Day an honorary Academy Award.