Versions of the Stepford Wives are a little like the robot honeys themselves. First you take a product (The Ira Levin novel), which is interesting, muli-faceted and gripping. Then you remove some of it's ideology to make it presentable for movie goers (The 1973 movie), then after a few hideous makeovers, (The Stepford Children, The Stepford Husbands and Revenge of the Stepford wives, three awful made for TV movies), you showcase your newer and shinier version of the old faithful novel, but ensure that the branding is irreversable. Sounds pretty heartless to me...
The movie opens on a TV network presentation. Network CEO Joanna Eberheart (Kidman) stands before a largely female audience to extol the virtues of her new season of post-feminist programming, including a reality dating show called 'I Can Do Better'. Kidman looks like a broom handle in a Miyake dress, and is immediately detestable. A disgruntled reality contestant who was royally dumped on 'I Can Do Better' agrees with this assessment, storms the building and tries to shoot her. Obviously he misses, trying to hit a three inch wide target from that distance is nigh on impossible, but the network see fit to fire Joanna themselves, and her spineless husband carts the whole family off to Stepford.
The production design by Jackson DeGovia is superb. Realistic, yet dreamlike. A version of the Disney owned town of Celebration, you can imagine walking into this mini paradise and being simultaneously enchanted and sickened.
Bette Midler as Joanna's hard-nosed writer friend Bobbi is remarkably well cast, as is Roger Bart as 'Roger Bannister' the swishy half of Stepford's only gay couple. Plucked from musical theatre for this role, he handles the range of comedic presence and is still believable as the frightened first victim of the new intake of Stepford.
The Stepford Wives is a funny and enjoyable movie, but the structure needed a derious overhaul, because the first act comes off as offensive and snide towards women. From the off, women are shown as heartless ball-breakers who will do anything to get ahead and jolly well deserve what's coming to them. Though Joanna Eberheart redeems herself as a character by the time we reach Stepford, the writing doesn't. We are shown the polarisation between the pre-robot women and the automatons, but still ringing in your ears are the brainless lines about 'superwomen' and 'having it all'. The climactic scene before Joanna is taken into the laboratory is littered with anti-feminist cliches which sum up as 'You're better than me at everything and I can't handle it so you have to die'. Nothing up to this points suggests that Joanna's slow descent into the lab, with her simpering husband and robotic shell for company, will not be the start of the movie's final scenes.
Any female who finds shampoo commercials less than scintillating will be roundly annoyed by the time the Big Twist emerges, which detracts from the plot turns. By the end of the movie however, there is a Hollywood sense of All's Right With The World. In a way, this is The Stepford Wives Lite. No-one is killed, there is comedy where there once was tension, and at least one man manages to redeem himself. This is a studio movie, and women, having been the villain at the start of the movie, are back up there again by the end. The men in the movie are far too stupid to mastermind a plot so nefarious, and it is the lovable Glenn Close who is revealed as the evil witch from hell.The message? Women may be badly treated, but in the end, they've brought it on themselves.
Paul Rudnick's screenplay is excellent, and will make you laugh out loud on more than a dozen occasions. He can't really be blamed for awful structuring, feelingt he cold grip of the movie exec on his shoulder, and if you laughed at his previous efforts (In and Out, Addams Family Values) then you'll love The Stepford Wives.
Anyone expected a good old fashioned re-hash of the original movie will be in for a shock by the time the credits roll, but a few funny lines will stick in your head, and this is a movie which is a more comfortable watch the second time around.
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