The Stepford Wives Review
by Richard A. Zwelling (razwee AT yahoo DOT com)June 14th, 2004
THE STEPFORD WIVES
1/2* (out of ****)
a film review by
Richard A. Zwelling
Unfunny, uninvolving, and filled with enough phoned-in performances to make you puke, this is one of the worst movies I have had the displeasure of enduring over the past few years.
The premise is somewhat similar to Ira Levin's original novel. Joanna (Nicole Kidman) is a high-powered TV executive who moves with her husband (Matthew Broderick) and two children to the picture-perfect town of Stepford, Connecticut. The wives of the town, whose perky, effervescent leader is played by Glenn Close, are all stunningly beautiful with thousand-watt smiles.
But dark secrets lurk beneath a seemingly innocent veneer, and the local men's club (comprising the husbands and led by Christopher Walken) gives Joanna a reason for pause. Soon, she is drawn into a mysterious web of events that might threaten to destroy the lives of her family, and possibly her own as well.
Let's start with the notion that Ira Levin's novel and its first cinematic adaptation were intended as a dark mystery devoid of inconsequential levity and screwball sensibilities. Why it was recently green-lighted as a comedy I cannot begin to imagine.
The most blatant error is the film's lack of cohesiveness and involvement. The scenes feel like a series of bad Saturday Night Live sketches thrown together to form an episodic disaster. Depth-of-character is only hinted at, but never stretched beyond anything one-dimensional. The best example of this is Roger Bart, who embodies the stereotypical flaming gay man. He is undoubtedly funny, but his wry, witty dialogue seems more at home in an episode of Will & Grace or in a brief comic vignette.
The only thing mildly engaging about the film is an overabundance of one-liners that eventually becomes repetitive, irritating, and pointless; the transitions from scene to scene are not there to further character and story, but to position us for the next lame attempts at painfully sophomoric comedy.
Following from this, I have to say that it was not only infuriating, but insulting to see great talents like Glenn Close, Matthew Broderick, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken, Jon Lovitz, Bette Midler (and also director Frank Oz) wasted on drivel like this. These are not parts to which they might apply their unique talents, but are instead paper-thin roles that could easily be filled by lesser actors.
If I had to pick one word that most effectively describes why this movie falls flat, it would be "hodgepodge". The Stepford Wives is a chaotic mess of uninteresting characters that, when put together, are vastly inferior to the sum of their parts. They form no coherence except for transient moments within scenes, and usually just for the purpose of a single barrage of one-liners.
The surprises and plot points are so sloppily conceived that one is forced to just sit dazed in confusion and wonder why (and how) the hell the movie went there in the first place.
By the end of the film, I was reduced to fits of laughter, although not the kind the film intended. The conclusion of the film is so inept, desultory, and just bad, bad, bad, BAD that I actually started hoping it would get worse so I could laugh more. You know you're in trouble when actors of this caliber attempt drama, and the result is so bad, it's funny.
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