Review

'Wives' is out of step

The allegedly updated version of The Stepford Wives would be a better movie if it were truly updated, if director Frank Oz and screenwriter Paul Rudnick paid attention to how gender differences have changed since 1975. It isn't until the fadeout, after a clumsy late-minute rush of exposition, that the direction the filmmakers should have taken becomes clear.

Everyone should know the setup by now: Stepford is a chauvinist nirvana, a community where husbands turn wives into automatons doing their bidding. In 1975 that was chilling allegory mirroring female subjugation that the feminist movement was shoving aside. Now that the battle of the sexes is mostly acknowledged as a draw, the premise doesn't have much grounding in fact, the foremost element that satire requires to work.

There's only one thing that could have, should have, been done with the remake, the same thing that American society did: Reverse the roles. Keep the title but make the Stepford wives the puppetmasters of the plot. Have them subjugate their husbands, turning them into robots, forcing them into behaviors once considered "women's work." Watching men unable to handle cooking, interior design and laundry would be funnier than anything Rudnick's script gives them to do.

The new Stepford Wives doesn't seem to like women very much. Nicole Kidman can't be simply Joanna Eberhart, a housewife trundled into oblivion; she has to be a stressed, successful TV executive who botches her job. Her husband, Walter Kresby (Matthew Broderick), is supportive but succumbs to Stepford's grand scheme when Joanna's bad attitude leaves him with no other choice. He's even the third act hero when Oz and Rudnick veer completely away from Ira Levin's book and the first movie version for a wacky finale that falls flat.

Wait until you learn who's behind the Stepford scheme in this version and for what reason. Not only is it another slap at sisterhood, it reinforces how senseless it is that the reprogramming isn't aimed at the husbands. And you know that bald android in the preview trailers? It doesn't mean a thing since Stepford's women aren't pod people but have computer chips installed in their brains. That's audience manipulation of the sloppiest sort.

At 93 minutes, the movie still feels padded, first by the spoofs of reality television Joanna devises and finally by yet another scene of Larry King interviewing principle characters to wrap things up. In between, some comical moments work - Roger Bart steals the show as a gay Stepford robot and Bette Midler spits out a few juicy lines - but even their characters aren't consistent with the Stepford premise. Midler's independent woman would have been kicked out or converted long ago, and Bart's transformation into a buttoned-down Republican political candidate while keeping his male partner is so far from reality that it's embarrassing to see it milked for laughs.

The movie looks good, with exaggerated feminine touches and colorful costuming inspired by those perfect housewife images from 1950's kitchen appliance ads. Yet the visual time warp the movie immerses itself into makes the Stepford scheme's success even more unbelievable. Joanna is tough enough to run at the first sight of taffeta, which should end the story after 15 minutes. That constant conflict between plausibility and the fantasy the filmmakers are pushing makes this a step backward from the original.

Grade: C-

The Stepford Wives

Director: Frank Oz

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken, Bette Midler, Roger Bart, Faith Hill, Jon Lovitz

Screenplay: Paul Rudnick, based on the novel by Ira Levin

Rating: PG-13; sexual material, profanity

Running time: 93 min.

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