They are “The Women,” but you won’t hear them roar. Today’s declawed update does remake, but dons a much paler shade of “jungle red” by comparison to, 1939’s sharp, catty classic by the same name.
Director George Cukor’s droll, politically incorrect favorite from 70 years ago was the “Sex and the City” of its day — maybe the first ever literal chick flick. Not a single man appeared on camera (which is almost also true of the redo). But in that golden era, they didn’t need men; they had larger-than-life movie goddesses like Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer.
Based on Clare Boothe Luce’s stage comedy of manners, the original satirized the quirky urban folkways of upper-class housewives; the innate adulterous tendencies of men, and the complicated mix of competition, companionship and schadenfreude that colors female friendship.
Are things really so different nowadays?
Judging by feminist director-writer Diane English, the creator of TV’s “Murphy Brown,” apparently yes. Or maybe English just felt the need to “modernize.” Her cliché-ridden exercise in comic and emotional manipulation becomes a girl ghetto of eye-popping designer consumerism, career empowerment, explicit “hip” banter (with oral sex, tampon and breast-milk quips) and female bonding (without the bite). This must be in order to pander to Sarah Jessica Parker’s big audience and/or to have attracted a prominent she-ensemble of Hollywood’s image-conscious gender defenders.
So instead of Ms. Russell’s loud-mouthed, gaudy pot-stirrer, a bland Annette Bening plays “best friend” Sylvia Fowler as a well-intended, only-inadvertent saboteur. She doesn’t mean it when she messes in the central love triangle. It forms when Sylvia’s angelic pal Mary Haines — the limited grinner Meg Ryan miscast to fill the pumps of the noble Shearer — discovers that her husband is cheating on her with femme fatale shop girl Crystal Allen. Eva Mendes smolders but never stings in that role made immortal by the great diva hellcat of all time, Joan Crawford.
Debra Messing is over-the-top silly as a professional mommy while Jada Pinkett Smith barely registers as the token minority/token lesbian in the main social circle. Though a few good dialogue lines really zing, only the cheeky elders in minor parts take full advantage, including Cloris Leachman as Mary’s housekeeper, Candice Bergen as her mom and Bette Midler as a kooky mentor.
Maybe if they had just called this “First Wives Wear Prada in the Ya-Ya City,” something other than “The Women,” it wouldn’t have seemed so bad.
Quick Info
“The Women”
2 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes
Director: Diane English
Rated PG-13 for sex-related material, language, some drug use and brief smoking.
Running Time: 114 minutes
