The Stepford Wives
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: June 11, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
42
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
17
Negative:
14
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Contrary to recent rumors that it was a dud, the new Stepford Wives, with its chocolate-box visual style, archly heavy-handed foreshadowing and its scene-for-scene parody of the original's fright strategies (Walken's waxy menace is once again played for laughs), is a gas. Read full review
80
NewsweekCathleen McGuigan
Glenn Close, Bette Midler and Roger Bart (who plays one half of a gay couple slated for Stepfordizing) are hilarious, and even Nicole Kidman flashes comedic gifts not seen since "To Die For." Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
It's hilarious -- and on purpose, too. This is the first satisfying adult summer comedy set in New England to come out of Hollywood since "The Witches of Eastwick" in 1987. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
The star of this overachieving trifle is not Kidman, it's Paul Rudnick. The New York playwright and screenwriter ("In & Out") has taken a pair of dated watermarks from the '70s - Ira Levin's horror novel and its faithful 1975 movie adaptation - and turned them into a broad, feverishly fey parody. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The 1975 movie tilted toward horror instead of comedy. Now here's a version that tilts the other way, and I like it a little better. Read full review
70
SlateDavid Edelstein
I had a fabulous time. Well, I did once I accepted that it was a campfest--a great Provincetown drag show of The Stepford Wives. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Corliss
A film full of smart laughs. Read full review
63
USA TodayMike Clark
You feel some of the strain in this immaculately shot, designed and costumed farce, but it's fast and the cast is lively, even though a lost-looking Broderick rarely gets to shoot his patented bewildered look. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Trying to be more antic and cuttingly funny, it misses the premise's shivery tension. The story loses us at precisely the moment it should put us in the vise. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Because the entire audience knows what's going on, the filmmakers hope to distract viewers from storytelling weaknesses with an urgent sense of style. Read full review
60
VarietyBrian Lowry
Another "remake" that merits the title in name only, The Stepford Wives isn't the "troubled" disaster that media reports have suggested it might be, yet nor do its oddly matched parts ever congeal into a fully formed creation. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
If the filmmakers had made a point of satirizing the new makeover culture in ways that went beyond camp jibes at décor and suburbia, they might have come up with a classic. Read full review
60
EmpireKim Newman
It’s funny, wonderfully performed by all, visually inventive. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The film's creepier moments are pathetically weak, and its thematic update fails to attain the minimal credibility that even a wild farce needs to sustain itself. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
At no time do the men -- that is, the straight ones -- believably hold the upper hand. In the new town of Stepford, there's no bitterness, no struggle, no competition, none of the scars of the sexual revolution. There's just gay apparel. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Close gets laughs, as does Bette Midler as a Jewish rebel. But the sting is gone. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Isn't so much bad as it is puny: a sporadically amusing, occasionally funny, but ultimately bland and pointless time killer. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Only Close, in a majestically, maniacally brittle demonstration of Stepford overdrive, has the courage to show how nutty the pursuit of domestic perfection is. In this mess of a film, she is perfection. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Great casting ideas, like Glenn Close and Christopher Walken as "the King and Queen of Stepford," don't pay off, because the filmmakers' increasingly desperate twists alter the basis of the characters. Read full review
50
New York PostMegan Lehmann
Boasts a stellar ensemble cast and some priceless one-liners -- but those pearls of acerbic wit have been strung together on a cheap piece of thread which almost inevitably breaks in the third act. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Before it degenerates into a complete mess, it's an entertaining mess, and something about its willingness to please maintains the audience's goodwill throughout. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
It was somebody's nitwit idea to rip out the story's guts and brains for a sour sellout of a finale -- which finds the filmmakers behaving exactly like Stepford men and turning an original into a dummy. Read full review
40
The New York TimesDana Stevens
It does manage to fire off a handful of decent jokes and a few sneaky insights before losing its nerve and collapsing into incoherence. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The picture is mildly entertaining and stringently unoffensive (provided you're not a supersensitive upper-crusty type from Connecticut). Yet it has problems from the start. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Almost desperate to show it gets its own point. What's funny is that the joke--"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" reconfigured as anti-feminist backlash--was scarcely fresh when Bryan Forbes shot the first movie version nearly 30 years ago. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Unfortunately this is much tamer than it had to be--Rudnick Lite, meaning on the edge of evaporation. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
A Frankenstein's monster of a movie: clumsy, patched together from parts that don't align properly, desperate to be loved, destined to be chased by mobs with pitchforks - those will be the critics - until it stumbles into its grave. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
If the film is to work on any level, even a comedic one, it's necessary for the viewers to sympathize with Joanna and Walter. However, the script and scattershot performances keep them at arm's length. Nicole Kidman is in full scenery-chewing mode, and Matthew Broderick hasn't been this invisible since Ferris Bueller had to go back to school. Read full review
38
PremierePeter Debruge
Close is the best and worst thing about the film, delivering a performance that upstages even Christopher Walken (!), taking her over-the-top Cruella de Vil turn to its saccharine-sweet opposite. Read full review
30
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The movie takes a desperately wrong turn about 45 minutes in, and you can almost hear the great sucking sound as the whole thing churns down the drain in a swirl of narrative contradictions. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
The result: an empty comedy that takes hackneyed potshots at consumerism. Read full review
30
Washington PostStephen Hunter
None of it appears to be well thought out, or thought through, and it's consequently never remotely believable. Read full review
30
Film ThreatKevin Carr
The story and themes behind The Stepford Wives are way past their time. They’re products of the 1960s. Read full review
30
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Rudnick is a wit, and his script allows everyone a decent one-liner or two. But the problem with one-liners is that they only last one line, leaving a whole movie around them that needs filling in. Read full review
30
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
Lured to the project with John Cusack as her original co-star (cruelly replaced by Matthew Broderick), Nicole Kidman phones it in. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The film contains so many endings that it's hard to tell what impressions the filmmakers want us to leave the theater with. Buy a copy of the book instead. It remains an excellent read. Read full review
25
Portland OregonianKaren Karbo
So god-awful it falls into the category of needing to be seen to be believed. A purported satire of the 1975 camp horror classic, it succeeds in failing on almost every level, including knowing what it's actually satirizing. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
There is no tonal consistency from scene to scene, swinging from domestic drama to farce. Most of the actors -- especially Matthew Broderick -- look lost. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Misbegotten is the only way to describe this remake of the 1975 film based on Ira Levin's cultural-zeitgeist novel. Read full review
10
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A pitiful shambles of a remake, The Stepford Wives might have qualified as a rethinking of the 1975 original if there were any trace of coherent thought in the finished product.
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