News
Books
Writing
Hobbies
Gallery
Links
Email Brian
Email Kerri
Unless otherwise noted,
all material on Heromaker.net
is written by Brian Murphy
© 2006.
Review Archive
FILMS
The Stepford Wives (2004)Hint: Rhymes with "completely dreadful."
We've had a spate of remakes over the past few years. And, generally speaking, I wholeheartedly support that. Whether they stay quite faithful to the original material (The Grudge vs. Ju-On), re-envision certain elements of the original (Dawn of the Dead's running vs. shambling zombies), or completely rework the entire thing, right down to the genre. Just recently, Starsky & Hutch has gone from buddy actioner to whacky, off-beat comedy. Charlie's Angels has received infusions of HK-inspired wirework and techno soundtrack. And now, The Stepford Wives has made the transition from creepy thriller to spectacularly unfunny satire.
I wouldn't call the original a "horror" movie really. But that's as close a designation as any. Whereas the remake foregoes a lot of the scares in favor of cheap laughs. Personally, I think that horror and comedy are a tough balance to get right. It can be done. (Shaun of the Dead nails it, dead center.) But it's not easy. And the inclusion of Jon Lovitz doesn't help. (Don't get me wrong. Lovitz is funny. But he's not scary. In fact, he creates a scare vacuum. It's very difficult to get scared when Jon Lovitz is in your line of sight. I've tried.)
Here's the synopsis (replete with spoilers, if it's possible to spoil this movie): Nicole Kidman plays Joanna Eberhart, high-powered network executive. She gets canned after a reality show she's promoting drives one participant to go on a gun-toting rampage. Rather than accept culpability, the network fires Joanna. There's your first satire, for those of you keeping track. The reality show is similar to Fox's Temptation Island. The wife in this case decides "I Can Do Better" (the show's title) and leaves her husband for the cast of a porn movie and a large Samoan-looking bloke named "Tonkiro." The husband cracks at the loss of his family, ending his rampage with an attempt on Joanna's life in front of a televised audience.
Joanna and her earnest, well-meaning husband Walter Kresby (played by Matthew Broderick) pack up their two children and head to Stepford, Connecticut, to get away from the hustle, bustle, and gunplay of the city. (Come to think of it, I haven't the slightest idea why there are children in this movie. They aren't really characters. They barely appear at all, except to provide some vague leverage against Joanna when she begins to poke her nose behind the scenes. And even then, you don't actually see them.)
Immediately, Joanna is put off by the idyllic environment of Stepford. The wives are all knockouts. The houses are perfectly decorated, cleaned, and completely automated. And the husbands spend their days smoking cigars and playing billiards at the Stepford Men's Club. Walter, on the other hand, is quickly lured by the whole thing. So much so that the Men's Club (lead by Christopher Walken's Mike Wellington) chooses early on to let him in on their secret: That the wives of Stepford are actually routinely replaced with perfect automatons programmed to do their husbands' bidding.)
Normally, I really like Christopher Walken. Love him in fact. But even he can't save this lemon.
While Walter is living it up at the Men's Club, Joanna is being subjected to the wives of Stepford. She gets dragged by Claire Wellington (Glenn Close) to aerobics classes designed to emulate the movements of various household chores. And to tea parties. And neighborhood picnics. It's at the picnic where Joanna finally meets a couple of allies: Bobbie Markowitz and Roger Bannister, played by Bette Midler and Roger Bart. Bobbie (wife of Jon Lovitz's Dave Markowitz) is a well-known author. She's also the most transparently unimaginative stereotype of a distrustful, antagonistic New Yorker ever committed to screen. She constantly argues with her husband, providing the setup for her eventual "processing." And she provides, at least initially, the impetus for uncovering Stepford's secrets.
Roger Bannister is similarly stereotypical. He's flamboyantly gay, which isn't particularly interesting in and of itself. But he's in Stepford with his straight-laced Republican, and yet openly gay, partner Jerry. What bothers me is not that there's an openly gay Republican. But that the gay man in the film who defies the stereotype is a villain, whereas the cartoonishly obvious depiction of the gay man (who practically goes into anaphylactic shock at the idea of wearing Brooks Brothers) is one of the heroes.
Here's the bitter pill: This fictional town's values are so warped that they'll happily replace all their real women with automated likenesses customized to serve their husbands. But they're perfectly OK with the idea of a gay couple. Whereas in real life, gay couples struggle day in and day out just to get rights that heterosexual couples take for granted.
Back to the movie. The first real hints we get that the Stepford wives aren't what they appear is when 1) one of the wives gets "stuck" like a record player during a tea party and 2) when the same wife (actually, I'm not sure about that, since they all look the same) goes haywire at a barn dance, eventually falling over and sparking.
Sparks? OK, so they're robots. That idea is reinforced by the fact that each husband has a remote control for his wife. We get to see some of the capabilities of this remote control when Joanna, Bobbie, and Roger let themselves into the Sunderson's house and overhear Herb and Sarah (played by Faith Hill) getting their groove on upstairs. Roger finds the remote control and begins horsing around with it. In the background, we see Sarah walk downstairs, pause, back up, and go forward again as Roger cluelessly pushes buttons. There's even a button that inflates and deflates Sarah's bust (for those times when Faith Hill just isn't quite hot enough for you as is).
Ludicrous enough yet? No? OK, don't say I didn't warn you. When the Stepford Men's Club decides to let Walter into their inner sanctum, they show off their infinite cleverness by withdrawing cash from one of the automated wives like an ATM. She sticks the card in her mouth, pulls it out, and spits up cash.
Sadly, you probably read that right.
OK, so the Stepford wives are robots. Got it? Good. Joanna and her cohorts gradually figure all this out. But first Roger and then Bobbie are assimilated, leaving Joanna alone to face the whole community. In truth, though, it's really mostly her against the Men's Club and her own husband Walter.
I'm going to reiterate the spoiler warning here. I'm about to reveal the ending. And while I keenly encourage you to skip this movie (so you might as well read the review), that call is still yours to make. (See how I nurture your individuality and free will? I'm not from Stepford, you see.)
Joanna discovers via the Internet that each of the Stepford Wives used to be highly accomplished in the fields of business, science, law, etc. Making their transformation into happy homemakers that much more shocking (read: predictable and dull). Here's a hint Stepford: If you've got a big secret in your town, limit Internet access.
Eventually, Joanna confronts the Men's Club, only to be counterconfronted (top that!) by Mike Wellington, Walter, and the other husbands. They reveal that they've all been threatened for years by their ultra-successful wives and that they've been reduced to "wusses" by the experience. Looking around, I can't help but think two things: 1) These guys were wusses from way back. No sense blaming their wives for that. 2) I realize that women have different (and generally more forgiving) criteria for choosing a life partner. But why in the hell would any given sample of gorgeous, intelligent, driven women choose anyone from this pool of bottom feeders?!
Walter and Joanna disappear into the secret laboratory under the Stepford Men's Club, the process by which the husbands of Stepford say goodbye to their old, imperfectly human wives and hello to their new, perfectly perfect wives. Next scene, we see Joanna (now blond and decked out in dress) walking the perfect aisles of the perfect supermarket saying "hello" to all the other perfect wives.
Not buying it? Good. You're already too smart for this flick. It's a cunning ruse. At the big gala event in Stepford, Joanna distracts Mike Wellington while Walter sneaks downstairs to the laboratory and sabotages the automatons. We're treated to a graphical display monitor for each wife, showing the "neural implants" being destroyed, freeing the women at the party above.
[Insert sound of screeching tires here] What? Neural implants?! I thought they were robots. And yet, now the neural implants have exploded into dust (which apparently also has no ill effect on an otherwise healthy brain) and the women are all back to normal. They immediately turn on their husbands and the balance of power is properly restored. (By the way, "Balance of Power" was another of the shows being pimped by Joanna at the beginning of the movie. A game show that involved a wife showcasing her superiority over her beset husband. More satire... I guess.)
Mike Wellington's plans lay in ruins as the wives of Stepford rise up against the ineffectual wusses of Stepford. He goes to take a swing at... someone. I can't remember who. But Joanna knocks his head clean off with a large urn. Yep, Mike Wellington is a robot. (Huh. We're back to that robot thing again.) And the only wife not to be restored by Walter's sabotage goes completely round the bend. Claire Wellington.
It turns out that Claire, not Mike, was behind the whole crazy caper. It further turns out that Claire used to be a highly respected geneticist who caught her real husband cheating on her with her younger research assistant. So she killed them and moved to Stepford to set up the perfect community, where men and women knew their roles and performed them without question or complaint. In a passing shot at the state of Connecticut, Claire points out "who'd notice a town of robots in Connecticut?"
Now, I'm no geneticist. But... do they generally make robots?
In a scene reminiscent of that time I watched a high-school production of Romeo & Juliet under the influence of too much NyQuil, Claire kisses the disembodied head of her dead Mike and is electrocuted to death.
The epilogue shows Joanna (with the trusty Walter at her side... or off-stage rather), Bobbie, and Roger being interviewed by Larry King while the husbands of Stepford are subjected to "re-education." The closing scene shows them all dragging themselves through the aisles of the idealized supermarket, reduced once again to wusses. (You know, because grocery shopping makes you a wuss.)
In the end, I think the cleverest thing about The Stepford Wives is probably the production itself. The theme of the movie is that you might be able to replace your wife with an automaton, but ultimately it'll be a shadow of the real thing. Such is the case with this steaming pile of remake. Do yourself a favor and rent the original. But not at my video store. I want to see it again myself. And I know you. You'll never return the damn thing.
|