The Stepford Wives Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)June 14th, 2004
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
THE STEPFORD WIVES
Directed by Frank Oz
Screenplay by Paul Rudnick based on the novel by Ira Levin
Rated PG-13, 93 minutes
LADY BE GOOD
Like a standup comic working a forlorn Catskills resort, The Stepford Wives manages to make you laugh from time to time, but it never makes you not wish you were somewhere else.
These days we all know what a Stepford Wife is. The term has stayed in the language over the 30 years since Ira Levin's novel and the Katherine Ross movie tweaked male anxiety over encroaching feminism. In this Dreamworks remake, the filmmakers don't try very hard to keep the cat in the bag – they even let it out for the trailer. The push here is not for suspense or thrills. This time it's all about being funny.
Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) is a network chief who has driven ratings through the roof with her enormously successful reality shows that humiliate men. But after one of the poor destroyed bozos (Mike White) shoots up the stockholders' meeting trying to kill Joanna, the CEO (also a woman) fires her, and she has a nervous breakdown.
Joanna's husband Walter (Matthew Broderick), a soft, loyal dweeb who worked under her at the network, quits his job in solidarity, and moves the family to the gated community of Stepford, Connecticut. They are greeted by the doyenne of Stepford society, Claire Wellington (Glenn Close), and shown around their domestic paradise.
While Walter gets comfortable with brandy and cigars at the Stepford Men's Club, Joanna dons her sweats and tries out the Simply Stepford Day Spa, where Claire leads the sundress-clad ladies in "Clairobics", as they twist their perfect bodies in imitation of household appliances.
It doesn't take Joanna long to realize this is not her kind of place. "These women are like deranged flight attendants," she marvels to her new best friends, slovenly writer Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler) and gay architect Roger Bannister (Roger Bart) – this 21st century Stepford is evolved enough to embrace Jews and gays, but not African Americans, though we do glimpse one never-to-be-seen-again black face in Clairobics class. When one of the wives (Faith Hill) short-circuits during a square dance party, Joanna suspects something sinister could be afoot. But when Walter threatens to leave her ("We haven't had sex in over a year," he complains), Joanna throws herself into trying to save her marriage. Nothing more is said about satisfying Walter's specific complaint, but she does bake enough cupcakes to fill the Albert Hall.
As Joanna and her two new friends snoop around town, they discover an odd thing about the Stepford wives. They all seem to be women who had once scaled the heights of accomplishment – brain surgeons, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and the like. They have now mysteriously morphed into airheads with big breasts and long legs and sculpted blonde hairdos and unflagging drives for homemaking and sex. "All the women around here are perfect sex kitten bimbos, "Bobbie observes, "and all the men are drooling nerds."
It's true – these once powerful and over-achieving women all seem to be married to slimy, back-slapping creeps. Why they married these creeps in the first place, and what possessed them to move to Stepford in the second place, are questions that fall outside this movie's ambition. "We all married Wonder Women, Super Girls," one of the men admits. But now, the worms are turning. Led by Claire's manly husband Mike (Christopher Walken), the Stepford husbands have changed their wives into obedient, smiling, martini-mixing, pot-roasting vessels of pleasure. The trick of the behavioral reshaping is revealed in a particularly witless animated infomercial, but the alchemy behind turning all these women physically into twenty-something Victoria's Secret models remains a mystery that may be being held back for Stepford 2.
The performances are uneven, with the best work coming from Glenn Close, who does a nifty grafting of Norma Desmond onto June Cleaver (in other words, come to think of it, Martha Stewart.) Kidman does all right, but Broderick is so completely lost that they've written in a scene to explain why she loves him ("You make me laugh," she says.) Walken is entertaining as always, but he must wish producers would stop thinking "This is a perfect Christopher Walken role – let's get Christopher Walken!" Midler and Bart keep us laughing for a while, but the talented Jon Lovitz as Bobbie's husband does not get the cream of the writing.
The creative partnership behind the camera for this remake reunites former Muppeteer Frank Oz with writer Paul Rudnick. The two previously teamed more successfully on In and Out. This time you have to wonder why they bothered. It's getting harder and harder to work up satiric juices over the pre-feminist ideals of Fifties American womanhood. The movie is bright in places, with some funny visuals and clever one-liners, but without a worthwhile context these are not enough to keep it afloat for long. And when it loses heart and sinks into turgid scenes of heartfelt tenderness and cloying philosophy, it becomes a movie only Stepford could love.
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