The Women Review
by Steve Rhodes (steve DOT rhodes AT internetreviews DOT com)September 12th, 2008
THE WOMEN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Just shoot me. THE WOMEN, a remake of a 1939 film, is set in a completely man-free Manhattan. Filled with the shallowest women you're likely to meet, the movie is a chick flick in the worst sense of that phrase. Sure, it's got a great cast, but this guy spent most of the movie eagerly waiting for the closing credits to start rolling so that he could beat a hasty exit.
In a story in which men are heard of but quite literally never seen, the movie starts with Sylvia Fowler (Annette Bening) prowling the aisles of her favorite luxury retailer, Saks. As she cuddles her little dog close to her bosom, she talks to one of her girlfriends on her cell phone. The topic of conversation concerns catty remarks that Sylvia is making about other women's wardrobes.
But the fireworks really start when Sylvia gets her nails done. Tanya (Debi Mazar), Sylvia's new manicurist, is a chatterbox and a non-stop gossip machine. Tanya tells Sylvia that a sales clerk friend of hers, Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), is having a big affair with a rich and married hedge fund manager.
Of course, the cheating guy is married to one of Sylvia's best friends, Mary Haines (Meg Ryan). This means that Sylvia will have to tell all of Mary's friends about the affair so that Sylvia can get their advice on whether she should inform Mary or not.
About the only thing that all of Sylvia's friends agree on is that the "spritzer girl" who is seeing Mary's husband is absolutely despicable. But Mary confesses that she has cheated too. Once, when she was kid, she scooted her playing piece up a few squares in Monopoly. Wow.
Jada Pinkett Smith plays Alex Fisher, the plot's token lesbian. Currently dating a supermodel, Alex lives a life in the fast lane of sleek sports cars and swank nightclubs. Other actresses play other female stereotypes.
Although the script takes great pains to suggest that most of the women in the film have important careers, their actions suggest that most of them are really card-carrying members of the idle rich. The scene with Sylvia getting her nails on one hand done while texting to her friends with the other perfectly epitomizes the women's vapid lives. Although there are women everywhere in the story, there doesn't seem to be a brain among them.
A clue to the story's unsuccessful approach might be in a snippet of dialog between Mary and her mother, Catherine Frazier (Candice Bergen). When Catherine supplies unwanted advice to her daughter, Mary tells her, "What do you think this is -- some kind of 1930's movie?" Intended, one supposes, to be a bit of ironic, self-deprecating humor, it comes across instead as an accidental apology to the audience for the film's unrealistic and unbelievable characters. I certainly didn't buy or care for any of them.
"Have you looked around lately?" Catherine, while enduring a very painful treatment to attempt to restore her youthful looks, asks her daughter. "There are no sixty-year-old women. I'm the only one left."
Gag!
THE WOMEN runs 1:54. It is rated PG-13 for "sex-related material, language, some drug use and brief smoking" and would be acceptable for kids around 12 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, September 12, 2008. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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