Movie review – “The Women” (2008) **

Artistically mostly a failure but fascinating to watch because you can see why they made the wrong choices they made. It would have been impossible to remake the 1939 film, which was inherently sexist – a bunch of women bitching and desperate to hang on to their men, nothing without them. So here the women are more supportive – they have careers and you are allowed to go back to a cheating husband, but only after you set up your own fashion line first. It means the work has been de-fanged a bit – the troublesome Rosalind Russell character becomes the bitch but with a heart of gold Annette Bening, there is Hollywood horseshit with Ryan running her own company.

That doesn’t matter so much. The real problem with this is that the ghost of Sex and the City lingers over it so much. I can understand why this is – presumably the success of that series/movie helped this get greenlit – but did Annette Bening have to be so reminiscent of Kim Cattrall? Did they have to focus on four friends and have scenes of them having lunch together chatting around a table being witty? Did it have to end with one of them having a baby? Did it have to be set in New York?

If this had come out in 1994 as originally planned it would have gone gangbusters. But now it just seems so old fashioned, with this irritating product placement for Sacks and this silly third act point where Bette Midler (wasted) inspired Meg Ryan with the words “you have to say to yourself ‘what do I want’?” The woman has a maid, housekeeper, one kid, big house and cool job - she doesn’t exactly strike me as Miss Selflessness.

English’s direction is very poor with anything other than a two hander (the two handers are fine but honestly who can’t direct one of them). Meg Ryan is okay, Bening too close to Cattrall, Debra Messing, Eva Longoria and Debbie Mazar are good, Candice Bergen and Cloris Leachman are terrific, Jada Pinkett Smith is poor (she plays it totally wrong, all sitcomy – and I didn’t believe that these women would be friends with that sort of lesbian).

Some really good scenes – Bergen and Ryan (really wonderful two hander), Bening and Ryan’s daughter. And there are bright lines and lots of good actors. This didn’t deserve the shell-acking it received at the hands of middle aged male critics, who seemed to be personally offended by it, but it’s still a disappointment.