Stars:
**
Rating: PG-13 for
language, sexuality and mature themes
Run
Time: 1
hour, 54 minutes
Ten years
in the making and simply dripping with feminist chic, “The Women” goes for the
gusto in the screen goddess sweepstakes.
And
semi-succeeds. Messy construction, trite themes and an endless parade of verbal
chestnuts can’t hide the fact that the women of “Women” are having fun.
Said group
of gals are the kind of close-knit types associated with “Sex and the City”;
disrupting hectic lives for daily doses of girl-power and forgiving all in the
name of eternal companionship.
Mary Haines
(mega-botoxed Meg Ryan) is the kind of woman others loves to hate; perfect
home, perfect child, perfect marriage and a button nose to boot. Between
high-profile volunteering gigs Mary chums around with best buddy Sylvia Fowler
(Annette Bening), a glamorous, influential magazine editor.
Mary and
Sylvia consider Edie Cohen (Debra Messing) an integral part of their set and
Edie miraculously manages a go-girls social life between popping out babies and
caring for her growing brood. Rounding out the fab four is Alex Fisher (Jada
Pinkett Smith), a ballsy gay authoress struggling with her second book.
If it
sounds familiar it is; “The Women” is based on George Cukor’s 1939 classic of
the same name but targeted squarely at the contemporary “Sex” market whose
ladies mopped up the summer box-office.
No males to
be found but they’re up front and center in spirit. Mary’s husband Stephen is
having an affair with a Saks Fifth Avenue “spritzer girl” (Eva Mendes) and her
pals are having none of it, setting out to win back Stephen’s cheating heart.
Every
cliché in the book is trotted out for maximum effect but I admit to laughing
long and hard at some of the script’s more catchy notions, such as one of our
gang being too busy filling in the cracks to actually look at them. Maybe you
had to be there.
Clothes are
dreamy (can someone please explain Ryan’s relentless procession of stripes?),
digs are standard movie glam and the gaggle takes good direction from
writer/director Diane English. Veterans fare well – Candice Bergen as Mary’s
mom and Cloris Leachman as her faithful housekeeper – and manage to drum up
dramatic credibility when the bubbles ultimately threaten to overflow.