The Stepford Wives Review
by Jerry Saravia (faust668 AT aol DOT com)June 29th, 2004
THE STEPFORD WIVES (2004)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Viewed on June 24th, 2004
RATING: Three stars
I think men today would love to have a wife who can completely nurture them. I mean, what man loves to wash dishes, cook, do the laundry, and clean house? So the notion that a woman can still be subservient to the man of the house is not just antediluvian thinking - heck, when my father remarried recently, he was looking for that ideal woman. The original "Stepford Wives" was an examination of such values, just when the women's liberation movement was in full swing. I am not sure the film was a condemnation of such attitudes since its ideas were wrapped around a thriller, focusing on how women are turned into robots. This new "Stepford" film is clearly condemning such thinking and, instead of utilizing the original's thriller mode, it opts to turn the whole story into a comedy. Success or yet another needless remake? I think it succeeds. A brunette-haired Nicole Kidman stars as Joanna Eberhart, a successful TV executive of reality shows who is suddenly jobless. She tries determinedly to hold back her anger, yet she lets out a shrill yell when she exits her job via the elevator. Then there's Joanna's husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick), who resigns from the same network - the twist being that he works in a lower position than Joanna. Then Walter announces that they are moving to Stepford, Connecticut to work out their marriage flaws. This is presumably a place where most troubled married couples go to, thanks to the supervision of the impossibly shrill, always beaming Claire Wellington (Glenn Close). Wellington is the real-estate agent and the woman whom all Stepford wives look up to. But this "Pleasantville" town seems to perfect to be true. Wellington teaches an aerobics class where the women wear dresses instead of sweats and instructs them to be "washing machines." Each house in this community comes equipped with a computer system that locks all doors, checks room temperature, offers diet advice, and reminds one of food products needed when the refrigerator is empty. Oh, and for some reason, there is a robot dog that is as clumsy and irritating as a real dog. This is also a town where the women have a book club discussing a Christmas decorations book, where the rallying cry for a men's club is simply "To Stepford!", and where nobody seems to occupy a job (my kind of place). The joke is that all the Stepford wives were once CEO's and, if I understood correctly, the men worked under them. Seems like the ideal place for Joanna and Walter.
Something is off in this town, though. The women of Stepford may be robots (I guess we are still not ready to accept female CEO's) thanks to the men who still believe in female enslavement. There is a creepy, frightfully funny scene where Walter discovers one wife is used as an ATM machine! The one who seems to be running this town is Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken), Claire's husband, who has politically incorrect ideas about women as shown in another creepy moment, a Stepford educational film done in the style of the 1950's. If you are ugly, we can make you beautiful and subservient.
The original "Stepford Wives" had an anonymous air of indifference to the town of Stepford, it seemed like the town was no different from any other town in America. That may have been the point but I do prefer the look of the pristine, far too sanitary look of this new Stepford. Shots of the clean supermarket, the elegant bedrooms and the refinery of the study rooms all pinpoint to a sense of discomfort. That is why it is fun to see one Stepford wife, Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler), an author of memoirs with sarcastic titles, living in a house of a seemingly irreparable mess. And some other wives, like the gay, Viggo-Mortensen-loving Roger (Roger Bart), seem to play along with the absurdity.
As written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Frank Oz, "Stepford Wives" aims to be comedic and ironic than horrifying. The original was more straightforward and occasionally thrilling, but its bland direction took away some of the bite. Here, we get more bite and more acerbic writing simply because the concept couldn't be played so straight nowadays. The movie aims to be satiric, to ridicule the idea that women would ever want to be slaves to their groom. It ups the ante on the original by saying that men do not wish to be equal to women, and they certainly never want to work for them.
Nicole Kidman shows enough edge and pain in her performance to take it just slightly over the top. As evidenced by her opening scene, she is a master of exaggerated haughtiness who knows when to restrain it and when to explode (as she did in "To Die For"). The character is as full-bodied as Katharine Ross's in the original and there is one scene, where she breaks down in front of Walter after admitting she was a workaholic, that is indicative of Kidman's emotions coming to the surface in a town where such emotions are suppressed. As for the rest of the cast, it is a relatively mixed bag. Beer-bellied John Lovitz as Midler's husband? Matthew Broderick seems lost as Kidman's husband, neither convincing nor serviceable in the role. Christopher Walken seems adrift in a typically strange role - just his mannerisms can give you the creeps but by now, they are too predictable. Faith Hill could have had more scenes as another Stepford wife in the background - her smile is so forced that it does indeed seem robotic. Only Glenn Close rises to the challenge of playing a wicked caricature with the most delicate subliminal gestures and facial reactions to indicate something other than a happy woman - this is among her best work since "Dangerous Liaisons." And Roger Bart as the only homosexual of this group (a novel touch) has dozens of delectable one-liners and zingers. "The Stepford Wives" is a ridiculously tame movie yet always entertaining and alive. The climax leaves more questions than answers. Still, it has some pointed notions of women's place in a working society where men want to reclaim their position as the master of the house. As Claire Wellington says at one point, "Where can you find such a place? Well, Connecticut, of course."
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