1 of 3

The Stepford Wives Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sexual content, thematic material and language) Theater release: June 11, 2004 by Paramount Pictures DVD release: October 05, 2004 Directed by: Frank Oz Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes Cast: Nicole Kidman (Joanna Eberhart), Matthew Broderick (Walter Kresby), Bette Midler (Bobbi Markowitz), Christopher Walken (Mike Wellington), Faith Hill (Sarah Sunderson), Glenn Close (Claire Wellington), Roger Bart (Roger Bannister) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

There has always been something a tad absurd about The Stepford Wives, even once you accept its science-fiction premise, but the new film pushes the concept way, way over the top. The original novella by thriller writer Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, The Boys from Brazil) tapped into feminist fears that men would gladly exchange their flesh-and-blood wives for domesticated, hyper-sexual robots if they could, and the 1975 film directed by Bryan Forbes went on to emphasize the even deeper horror that takes place within the men themselves: it is one thing to be killed and replaced by a machine, but it is quite another to allow your own soul to be twisted against your conscience. These days, however, it seems the battle of the sexes is either so complicated or so passé—take your pick—that the only thing a mainstream film can do with the subject is to make fun of it all. So, in the hands of Frank Oz—the Muppeteer who gave life to Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy and Yoda, and the director of the campy musical version of Little Shop of Horrors—The Stepford Wives has become an out-and-out comedy.

Joanna (Nicole Kidman) realizes something's not quite right

And as comedies go these days, it's actually fairly funny, albeit in a light, superficial way which either hides or exposes the fact that the plot is a thick tangle of mutual contradictions and the social commentary is pretty much all over the place. No doubt the incoherence on display can be blamed on the reshoots that reportedly plagued this production, but one does have to wonder how much of the credit, if that's the word, should go to screenwriter Paul Rudnick (In & Out), whose work in the past has shown a similar preference for zingers over narrative logic.

The first sign that the new film has pretty much nothing to do with the real world comes in the opening scene, in which Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman), now no longer a freelance photographer but the ultra-successful president of a top-rated television network, promotes a new batch of reality-TV shows that all hinge on female empowerment. (In real life, of course, shows that explicitly pursue the gender angle—like Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire? and The Swan—have taken the exact opposite tack and perpetuated the very stereotypes that feminists fought thirty years ago.) Joanna's plans are brought to a crashing halt when a man who appeared on one of her shows turns up, brandishing a gun and crying, "Let's kill all the women!" Fearing lawsuits, the network cancels all of Joanna's shows and lets her go—much to her shock.

Matthew Broderick plays Walter, Joanna's husband

Looking for a change of pace, Joanna and her doting husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) move with their family to Connecticut, and to the gated community of Stepford. At first, Joanna is weirded out by the buxom, blissed-out women in the floral-print dresses, but then she tries to fit in, baking cupcakes and knitting and performing various other tasks while Walter spends his time at the Men's Association, a club whose leader, Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken), offers Walter the chance to give his wife a mechanical upgrade. Earlier versions of this story kept Walter's activities at the club an ominous secret, and one that left him shaking; but in this film, he watches a man withdraw money from a woman's mouth as though she were an ATM, and his eyes go wide with appreciative wonder. Later, when his son is playing and idly remarks that robots are cool, Walter grins with anticipation. Ha, ha, ha.

Joanna does not entirely conform to the Stepford way of life, thanks to two other relatively new arrivals in town—Bobbi Markowitz (Bette Midler), a sassy Jewish author, and Roger Bannister (Roger Bart), a flamboyantly gay man—who bring a bit of spice to her life and keep it unpredictable. But one by one, Joanna's friends are Stepford-ized. Roger, who says there has been trouble in his relationship with his partner Jerry (David Marshall Grant) ever since the latter became a "gay Republican" (which Roger likens to being "gay with bad hair"), even becomes that rarest of specimens, a conservative politician who is both proudly gay and religious. And ultimately, Joanna too comes face-to-face with what her hubby has planned for her.

next page... |  1 of 3 | last page