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grrgoylLast night on a whim Tery and I got The Stepford Wives off Pay-Per-View. I was way more interested in seeing Shaun of the Dead just to see what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
swankyfunk has been on about, but DirecTV and Blockbuster clearly have some sort of agreement so you can't get NEW new releases on PPV right away. I'm tellin' ya, The Man always wins....
So anyway, with no further ado:
I normally can't stand Nicole Kidman, but she was quite good in this. I love Matthew Broderick (who doesn't?); on top of forever being Ferris to me, he also reminds me so much of my second boyfriend, Mike Johnson, it's almost uncanny. Bette Midler was divine as always. Glenn Close returned to her psychotic roots, and Chris Walken actually had relatively normal-looking hair.
I missed the first version, but I can see how its chilling feminist message might have turned a few heads in its day. This update included a gay male couple that got most of my laughs, proving that any movie can be pepped up with the addition of a slightly flaming, wickedly wisecracking homosexual character. I liked the 50's style opening credits, and the tongue-in-cheek reality shows that Kidman is trying to sell to the network (including "I can do better!" where a happily-married couple is tempted by an assortment of hot bods in a tropical setting to see if they return to their spouse or realize that they can do better....in the sales pitch ep, the mousy housewife opts to run off with the entire cast of a porn movie). I liked the message of the movie, that having "the perfect mate" isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if that perfection entails making them a soulless automaton. Being a feminist, I also saw an underlying message, that the only way some men can hope to feel superior to women is to resort to high-tech enslavement. My favorite line in the movie (without giving too much away) is Glenn Close's wail at the end, "Does anyone have a screwdriver????"
My only real complaints about the movie are a) not nearly enough time passes between Nicole's "transformation" and the climax of the film...after spending all this time building up the story, it seems to be over before we even realize it. Way too much foreplay, very little bang. b) Matthew basically cracks the nanochip codes on the wives' control panels by randomly slapping buttons. Okay, I'll buy this once. But then he goes on to do it for every single woman in the town. He should have run out and bought a lottery ticket as soon as he was through with that kind of luck.
So that's it. Cute movie, some laughs, a message that was probably a lot more relevant back when the original came out, but ultimately a rather unsatisfying ending. 3 out of 5
swankyfunk has been on about, but DirecTV and Blockbuster clearly have some sort of agreement so you can't get NEW new releases on PPV right away. I'm tellin' ya, The Man always wins....So anyway, with no further ado:
I normally can't stand Nicole Kidman, but she was quite good in this. I love Matthew Broderick (who doesn't?); on top of forever being Ferris to me, he also reminds me so much of my second boyfriend, Mike Johnson, it's almost uncanny. Bette Midler was divine as always. Glenn Close returned to her psychotic roots, and Chris Walken actually had relatively normal-looking hair.
I missed the first version, but I can see how its chilling feminist message might have turned a few heads in its day. This update included a gay male couple that got most of my laughs, proving that any movie can be pepped up with the addition of a slightly flaming, wickedly wisecracking homosexual character. I liked the 50's style opening credits, and the tongue-in-cheek reality shows that Kidman is trying to sell to the network (including "I can do better!" where a happily-married couple is tempted by an assortment of hot bods in a tropical setting to see if they return to their spouse or realize that they can do better....in the sales pitch ep, the mousy housewife opts to run off with the entire cast of a porn movie). I liked the message of the movie, that having "the perfect mate" isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if that perfection entails making them a soulless automaton. Being a feminist, I also saw an underlying message, that the only way some men can hope to feel superior to women is to resort to high-tech enslavement. My favorite line in the movie (without giving too much away) is Glenn Close's wail at the end, "Does anyone have a screwdriver????"
My only real complaints about the movie are a) not nearly enough time passes between Nicole's "transformation" and the climax of the film...after spending all this time building up the story, it seems to be over before we even realize it. Way too much foreplay, very little bang. b) Matthew basically cracks the nanochip codes on the wives' control panels by randomly slapping buttons. Okay, I'll buy this once. But then he goes on to do it for every single woman in the town. He should have run out and bought a lottery ticket as soon as he was through with that kind of luck.
So that's it. Cute movie, some laughs, a message that was probably a lot more relevant back when the original came out, but ultimately a rather unsatisfying ending. 3 out of 5