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1

TomGMar 7, 2009

A poor film. I realize the omission of any male cast was a deliberate stylistic decision, but it becomes conspicuously obvious and ostentatiously overt when they're walking down the street and there isn't even a single male extra A poor film. I realize the omission of any male cast was a deliberate stylistic decision, but it becomes conspicuously obvious and ostentatiously overt when they're walking down the street and there isn't even a single male extra walking along a public sidewalk. So much so that I have no idea what they were even talking about, as I was too focused on the absence of 50% of the population. They might well have blared THX-style "THERE ARE NO MEN IN THIS FILM!" Regardless, this must be the ultimate chick flick, since there are only chicks and only the chick point of view, which makes it inherently unbalanced. I was under the impression this was supposed to be a comedy film, but I kept waiting and waiting for the funny, but it never came. So I figured it must be a drama, but then what person really wants to see a bunch of privileged upper-upper-middle class women whining about their petty little lives. Was I supposed to like any of them or be sympathetic to them? Because they were all inherently unlikeable. Not to mention making themselves completely powerless. Meg Ryan goes in with the notion of kicking Eva Mendes' ass, and I thought, cool, it'll get interesting, but instead she just has a whine. I mean, jeez. This is your idea of kicking ass? In any event, it makes me glad that I'm gay, since if there is even a modicum of reality in this dreck, I am so thrilled that I dodged a bullet and will never have to put up with the sort of mindless crap shown in this film. Feminist? I guess so. Poor movies shouldn't be confined to just male-oriented ones. FAILure should always be an equal-opportunity phenomenon. DO. NOT. WANT.… Expand

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1

MarkB.Oct 16, 2008

Why, oh why, doesn't anyone ever listen to Samuel Goldwyn? Don't remake your GOOD movies, the legendary producer said, remake your bad ones until you get it right. There was absolutely no need for Diane English to run George Why, oh why, doesn't anyone ever listen to Samuel Goldwyn? Don't remake your GOOD movies, the legendary producer said, remake your bad ones until you get it right. There was absolutely no need for Diane English to run George Cukor's very entertaining and smart 1939 version of Claire Boothe Luce's hit play, a very watchable cat- and chatfest that provided definitive roles for Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford, through the mill again--in fact, the original's central gimmick of not showing husbands, fathers, sons or any other men, which worked in the original because it made no bones about embracing its essential theatricality, comes off here not only as hugely forced but also as astonishingly creepy. I mean, where DID all the guys on the streets and in the stores go, anyway? Did UFOs suck them up? Small wonder that when the movie's solitary male DOES appear, I was briefly but genuinely worried for his safety. It could be argued that English succeeds equally in making men disappear not only from the screen but the theater as well (one of the four who were in the theater with me walked out halfway through, and who knows how desperately the others, who were there with spouses or dates, WANTED to), but movies like this commit the crime of rendering GOOD so-called "chick flicks" (In Her Shoes, The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the City, Mamma Mia! and even much of Tyler Perry's work) inaccessible to most men who, having sat through this, would opt to endure testicular surgery without benefit of anaesthetic rather than attend another. Worse still is her unerring knack for turning a lot of wonderful actresses' chief strengths completely against them: playing a woman with a straying husband, Meg Ryan's genuine cuteness comes across as unbearably saccharine; Annette Bening's normally amusing tartness is whiny and annoying; Cloris Leachman's usual salt-of-the-earth wisdom here is merely dowdy--English can't even get a good performance out of Candice Bergen, whose career English permanently redefined in Murphy Brown, for God's sake! (The performer who comes off the worst by far, though, is the normally charming Jada Pinkett Smith. She plays a lesbian, which is easy to tell because she wears tight power suits and looks prenaturally pissed off most of the time. Since she's the only gay character, and virtually the only African-American in the movie, I hope some Picturehouse Pictures hack didn't, upon reading English's script, exclaim, "Oh, good! Two birds with one stone!" If anything positive can be said for English's The Women, it can be that it disproves Michael Medved's apparent critical philosophy that one can (or should) only like movies whose politics or beliefs one agrees with (you can, after all, donate thousands to the ACLU and STILL love Dirty Harry); not since last year's anti-Iraq War snoozefest Lions for Lambs has a movie so thoroughly bungled its seemingly unassailable premise (that women are beautiful just the way they are, and shouldn't starve themselves into malnutrition to fit the media's unhealthy and near-impossible standards) --it sends so many mixed messages as to make The House Bunny look like Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique. But let's put things in perspective: TIME magazine critic Richard Schickel proclaimed English's The Women one of the worst movies ever made--oh, come on, Dick, when lined up against Caligula, Myra Breckinridge, all snuff films, most torture movies and the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter, this comes nowhere near. It's merely the worst film of 2008.… Expand