The Stepford Wives
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: February 12, 1975 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Bryan Forbes’ filmization of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives is a quietly freaky suspense-horror story. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineEd Gonzalez
Forbes’s direction is uncluttered and makes excellent use of the long shot, and though the film threatens to run out of steam at each and every turn, it never runs out of ideas. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
With its references to consciousness-raising groups and other archaic matters, it's very much of its time, but the film is effective for its vision of homogenized suburbia as a place in which housewifery has made women as interchangeable as the mass-produced products in their supermarket. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It's never really believable, but it tries to be, and it would have had a better chance as straight satirical comment. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Ira Levin is an eclectic writer who has done comedy-drama (Sleuth), adventure (The Boys from Brazil), thrillers (Rosemary's Baby), and science fiction such as The Stepford Wives. But Goldman's screenplay and Forbes's ponderous direction slow his exciting novel to a laborious pace. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderDon Druker
The cast—with the happy exception of the always delightful Paula Prentiss—is uniformly dreary; and by the time the mystery begins to take shape, it's hardly possible to care. Read full review
50
The New YorkerPauline Kael
It's so tastefully tame that there's no supsense.
50
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
William Goldman's leisurely script and Forbes' dull direction never quite capture the subtleties of Ira Levin's novel about an idyllic Connecticut commuter village where the housewives are a bunch of domesticated dummies. Read full review
40
NewsweekPaul D. Zimmerman
A shallowly satiric suburban joke that says some ugly and unsupported things about what kind of women men really want. [03 Mar 1975, p.70]
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