Saturday, May 26, 2007

Movie review - "The Stepford Wives" (2004) **

This sounds like a great idea - Nickers in a remake of The Stepford Wives - but it's a total mess. The original film wasn't a masterpiece but it knew exactly what it was doing - a thriller about men's fear of women. This doesn't know what it's about - a comedy, but it's scared of it's basic black nature... I mean, the women should be killed, but they're afraid of that so they just have the silly idea of a microchip in the brain. And it doesn't ring true that these dorky men could have pulled these super achieving women in the first place, and that horrible"men can be strong by liking women" ending. The are all these campy moments and gags throughout, something which marred In and Out by the same writer-director team.

 Roger Bart and Bette Midler are funny,Nickers could have been, but there's no guts or idea here. Chris Walken and Glenn Close have played these sort of roles too many times before.(I thought of a possible alternate ending - the men are killing the women, but Nickers triumphs and sets up her own Stepford... with the men as robots).

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