Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a rather negative look at Frank Oz's remake of the '70s weirdness THE STEPFORD WIVES. Sounds like this one has quite a few groaner moments and retarded references... We'll see. There's a screening in Austin next week... Maybe I'll like it... Who knows? I'm one of the few people that thought Oz's IN & OUT was a funny flick... Now on to the nameless reviewer, who I'll call Wife-beater Wearin' Warren... he puts some spoilers in the review, but it's only because he loves them... just has to put the Stepford Wives in their places sometimes, understand?
Greetings Harry.
Longtime reader, first time reviewer. Hope you can use this.
The Stepford Wives
Special public preview at Paramount Studios, 6.1.04
Spoilers!
Directed by Frank "Voice of Yoda" Oz, this is a breezy, comedic remake of the 1975 drama. Nicole Kidman is Joanna, a soulless, high-powered, black-clad TV network executive and mastermind behind some hit reality shows that don't seem to be as big parodies as they're probably meant to be: one called "Balance of Power," a pop cultural war-between-the-sexes game show and metaphorical harbinger of what's to come in Stepford itself -- could almost be an actual show.
After a disgruntled contestant of another of Kidman's reality shows (a naively faithful but weak-willed husband who lost his wife to a handsome competitor on a tropical island) goes on a shooting spree, leaving the network open to devastating litigation from the victims, Joanna is fired, suffers an (offscreen) nervous breakdown and implied electroshock therapy (not as funny as it was probably meant to be), her submissive husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) decides they need a fresh start in suburban Connecticut, so they load up the S500 with their two kids (all but absent from the remainder of the film, probably for the best) and they move to . . . the gated, WASPy community of Stepford.
This is not a hard-hitting satire; several of the quips fall flat or turn into outright groaners ("My name's not really Mike. It's a nickname I got because I originally worked for Microsoft.") The film is solidly in PG-13 camp so you don't get to see any naughty bits or any unusually strong language, and the overall tone is campy at times -- maybe playing to a significant gay demographic, as a homosexual male couple features prominently in the supporting cast -- one of its members providing most of the few real moments of self-referential humor. At one point the Stepford town leaders, promising to be "open-minded" to the new gay couple in town, turn him into a gay Republican and have him running for state senate with a hideous Reaganesque hairdo and Brooks Brothers suit. "You don't have to be stylish or even sensitive to be gay," he quips, in a questionable effort at humor.
Matt Broderick wears a look of permanent confusion and/or embarrassment throughout the early part of the film, as if he's wondering what happened to his career. (What the heck did happen to it anyway? Oh well.) Later on he grows some nads and confronts his careerist wife, in one of the few scenes of real emotion between them, and she makes an improbably fast about-face which might have you believe that she's been replaced by a robot double; but no, just an unlikely change of character. The next morning she's given up her black ensemble for Betty Crocker flowered prints and is busily mass-producing cupcakes in the couple's gargantuan kitchen. (Maybe the microchip implants aren't necessary after all.)
Most of the other characters, including Broderick, are virtual nonentities, though Christopher Walken makes a sincere effort at playing the heavy -- the apparent mastermind behind the robotic creations. Still, you have to feel a little bit embarrassed for him. He doesn't have much to work with here, and deserves better than being upstaged by Glenn Close at the end. Glenn Close in fact probably turns in the best (or least embarrassing) performance, and hams it up perfectly, as the material demands. (Bette Midler is also funny as the town's lone Jewish maven, relentlessly cynical about the other wives' inanities.)
I didn't buy the robot angle in the least, and there's one scene where one of the cyborg women is made to perform an act that seems just anatomically impossible (nothing sexual, just plain dumb. Watch for the ATM card scene and you'll know what I mean.) The women sometimes act as if they're totally mechanical creations (note use of remote controls, jittery motions, and so forth) yet we're told later on that they are their human selves, only with certain chips implanted in their brains. The logic is questionable at best. I think the whole setup would have worked better with a hypnosis or other form of hidden-control rationale.
The homes (mansions, really) are impeccibly decorated and furnished, and would do honor to any cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Like the cookie-cutter mansions and generic luxury SUVs in front of them, the film has a coldness to it, and it's hard to warm up to any of the characters as we barely get to know them; Nicole Kidman shows some depth in a climactic confrontation with Broderick (changed for the meaner by the Stepford mens'influence), but still there's not much for her to work with other than belaboring obvious contrasts between humans and robots. There are a couple of brief scenes in which Midler, Kidman and the witty gay guy are chumming around or skulking in the shadows of Walken's mansion trying to solve the mystery of Stepford, scenes in which the film really opens up from the friendliness between these characters, and things feel a bit more human, even relaxed. But those moments are too few and brief.
The political / sexual satire, such as it is, is too superficial and obvious to be worth much commenting on.
