"That's a nice-a donut."
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
The Stepford Wives (2004)
In another in a long line of dreadful movie remakes, is director Frank Oz' The Stepford Wives. This unsuccessful farce is a retread of the 1975 version starring Katharine Ross. In this version, Joanna (Nicole Kidman) is a successful television executive who has a nervous breakdown after a bad turn of events at an upfront for some new TV shows. So her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) takes her and the kids to live in the storybook suburban town of Stepford, Connecticut. It is a large gated community with overwhelming big super McMansions, where the lawns are all perfectly manicured, the wives are all beautiful, proper, and obedient, and the husbands never seem to work. It soon becomes apparent that something is amiss; the women are just a little too perfect. In fact, they may just be robots.
There are a number of other big names in the film, including Glenn Close and Christopher Walken as a couple who are leaders of the town, and Bette Midler as one of the neighbors. Despite this solid casting, the acting from almost everyone is pretty much limp. Broderick seems lost and has almost zero chemistry with Kidman; he probably spent much of principal photography wishing it were 1987 again. Kidman is sort of uglied up to stand out and contrast her character from the other Stepfords, but physical transformation doesn't guarantee a good performance. I imagine any actress could have done the same lifeless job. Although, in fairness to Kidman, I suppose she does her best given the material she had to work with. But Walken has now become a parody of a parody of a parody. Midler provides a few of the scant laughs as a man-hating feminist writer.
On the technical side of things, Oz and team employ some very strange cuts. For example, one sudden fade out is used where they are obviously trying to portray a sense of mystery (i.e., character knows something, but the audience doesn't). But it is simply awkward and distracting. The most serious flaw, though, is the script. What could have been a clever send-up of the sterile, wholesome 1950s culture and male-female stereotypes is instead a flat and dull story that is irreparably unfunny. The commentary on reality TV in the beginning is okay, but has been done better many times before. After the main story gets rolling, it never seems sure what it wants to be. All hope is lost during the baffling ending that ends up spelling everything out for you piece by piece. It's truly an awful ending if there ever were one. This should be an embarrassment for both men and women of all stripes.
The Verdict: D+.
Michael Bentley 2:49 PM
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