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Stepford Wives
Release Date: June 11, 2004
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Frank Oz
Screenwriter: Paul Rudnick
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Roger Bart, Glenn Close,
Faith Hill, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Mike White, Lisa Masters, Jon
Lovitz
Genre: Comedy, Thriller
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content, thematic material & language)
Official Website:
StepfordWivesmovie.com
Plot Summary: What does it take to become a Stepford wife, a woman perfect
beyond belief? Ask the Stepford husbands, who've created this high-tech
terrifying little town, in a very modern comedy-thriller.
Reviewed by John
Barker © 2004
- Take a pot shot but be warned.
Another day, another remake
and this time director Frank Oz has adapted Bryan Forbes 1974 film, based on Ira
Levin’s novel, about the populants of a small suburban town in Connecticut
called Stepford. For those of you not familiar with
either of the past incarnations, this modernised re-adaptation centres on the
activities of Joanna Egbert (Nicole Kidman) who is the director of programming
for the amusingly titled EBS. She announces the new line up for the channel with
the wonderfully post-modern Balance of Power, which is an interesting
rift on the Weakest Link, and I Can Do Better. The latter show is
a parody of reality television shows Survivor and Fantasy Island,
featuring professionally prostitutes who are paid to try and seduce the
contestants.
Unfortunately, one of the contestants of I Can Do Better turns
bitter because his wife has left him for a gang of prostitutes and so shoots
several of the hired hookers and even tries to kill Joanna. With lawsuits
beckoning the company has no choice but to fire our heroine and this sends
Joanna into a state of depression.
To
help Joanna out of this despairing situation her husband Walter (Matthew
Broderick) takes the Egbert family to live in the quite suburbs of Stepford,
away from the hectic and stressful city life. The family’s new house is
beautiful and technologically futuristic, with everything from a talking fridge
to an automated security system, which gives seed to the fascist techno-utopia
that the film satirises throughout.
Elements of satire are one of the successes of Franz Oz’s distinctly average
film as the robotic wives of Stepford provide a precise critique of a
controlling patriarchal society and a Germaine Greer-style slap in the face for
aesthetically obsessed women of the 21st century. This parody is
exacerbated in the scene where Kidman goes for a session of physical exertion
coined as Clairobics, in which all participants exercise by performing mock
household cleaning activities in time to music.
Taking the film into the realms of satire and outright comedy is a brave move
and works for most of film with Roger (Roger Bart), the feminine half of a
homosexual relationship, providing a Will & Grace style comic interlude to play
off the duo of Joanna and fellow Big-Apple cynic Bobbi (Bette Midler). In fact,
the comedic highpoint of the film involves this acting threesome; after secretly
breaking into one of Stepford’s residencies the group hear a couple having sex
climaxing in a When Harry Met Sally style orgasm to which Roger retorts
“Is that a DVD”.
Roger’s role as centre piece funny-man is furthered after he receives the
Stepford treatment, neurological implants which control the brain, as he is
elected as Governor and his acceptance ceremony is full of imagery from both
Bush and Schwarzenegger’s political catalogue.
Apart from the aforementioned performance of Roger Bart the rest of the cast
seem a little off-put by the style of the film as Kidman is a spoilt little brat
with childlike emotional make-up, Broderick is on Inspector Gadget form,
and even Christopher Walken as Mike is on auto-pilot. Whether or not they all
partook in the technology that is the centre-piece of the film, I do not know,
but the finished result is unbalanced and shameful considering the acting talent
on show.
For those viewers who have seen the original film, it may provide an interesting
aside. But in a summer dominated by big-screen delights, this will do well to
relegate the likes of I Robot and Spiderman 2 to the suburbs of
Connecticut.
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