Dir.
Frank Oz, 2004, USA, 93 mins
Cast:
Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler , Roger Bart, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken
Joanne Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) is a fearsome picture of success. She's the youngest president in the history of the EBS television network, with an array of controversial TV shows to her name as well as an admiring husband - the ever so slightly less successful, ever so slightly shorter, Walter (Matthew Broderick). But when she suffers a mental collapse for once it's Walter's who gets to take the lead. The Eberhart's pack-up and head for the suburban slumber of Stepford Connecticut, to begin a new life away from the rat race.
Here they are met by "flight attendant friendly" Claire Wellington (Glenn Close) and her cheer-squad of Stepford wives. Joanna is puzzled and mildly amused by the array of statuesque submissive blondes and their tubby, balding husbands - Walter is enchanted: "This town, and the houses, and this place - it's like a dream. Like the way life should be." He is soon drawn in to the Stepford Men's Association, while Joanna prefers the company of two other sceptical newcomers - Bobby Markowitz (Bette Midler) and Roger Banister (Roger Bart).
But the wide-eyed and narrow-waisted women of Stepford are all so happy with their perky, perfect lives that Joanna begins to wonder if she could be too. Walter thinks she could, and it's not until Joanna sees her two spirited friends transformed into model Stepford citizens that she starts to think her imperfect former life may not have been so bad after all.
Oz' remake of the 1975 horror begins in self-consciously contemporary (if somehow already dated) mode - with a swirl of publicity, camera flashes and the abrupt fall from grace of a powerful reality TV producer. But despite the opportunity to update a classic, The Stepford Wives (2004) is sorely lacking in originality. Style, it has in spades, with costumes and settings - the perfectly turned out wives, the manicured greens of the Stepford golf course - done to a T.
The unease of the original though, is all but lost - the horror potential of actors like Close and Walken and the gothic confines of the Stepford Men's Club, wasted. Oz' emphasis on the comedy offers some compensation. Paul Rudnick's screenplay is full of little laughs, with Bette Midler and Roger Bart getting the best lines and proving that they deserved to. And there are some great images - blonde beauties in cocktail dresses and stilettos caddying for their slothful husbands - but the memorable moments are scarce.
The film's most fun episodes are those where Bobbie, Roger and Joanna (very much the straight woman) knock around Stepford together, but these too are short on the ground. And as the story moves towards its conclusion, the scenes seem hacked together and rushed - as if Oz wants to side-step a conclusion which he knows holds little suspense.
Elizabeth Griffin
|
