THE WOMEN
THE WOMEN |
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When Mary's marriage hits the wall, the women in her life rally round to help. | score 1+ |
moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable) |
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| Cast Meg Ryan, Annette Benning, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candice Bergan, Bette Middler Director Diane English Screenwriter Diane English Country USA Rating / Running Time PG / 114 minutes Australian Release October 2008 Official Site (c) moviereview
2006-2008
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
The
most striking thing about Diane English’s update of George
Cukor’s 1939 classic is just how unfunny this comedy has become.
For most of its two-hour runtime, The Women
remains steadfastly flat. Whereas the original was a soaring, often
inappropriate, relentlessly acerbic bitch-fight, English renders it
winsome at best. A long-time pet-project from the co-creator of Murphy
Brown, it finally found favour on the coattails of Sex In The City. And if you thought that was a slog, you aint seen nothing yet. Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) finds herself on the curly end of an affair when her manicurist lets slip that Crystal from the perfume counter is seeing a married man, that is, Mary’s husband. Friends rally as divorce papers are written up but things go awry when her best friend inadvertently betrays her to tabloid papers. This particular cloud’s silver lining is self-determination, an unexpected benefit that finally sets Mary back on a happy path. Boasting a who’s who of female A-Listers – Annette Benning, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen – the film is distinguished, much like the audience who shared the preview screening, by a complete lack of testosterone. It’s meant to be a one in the eye, tits-out celebration of girl-power. Yet rather than form a convincing post-feminist critique, English seeks a comic hug-a-thon. With a couple of notable exceptions, largely bon mots from Mary’s mother (Bergen), wit turns into a horror show as each joke falls lemming-like to die a miserable death on the set floor. Not that we’re given any particular reason to care, but what did they do to deserve such disdain? A woefully inert exercise in celebrity casting, The Women doesn’t even have the good grace to crash spectacularly, preferring simply to run the curb as it runs out of gas. // COLIN FRASER |