George Cukor's 1939 masterpiece The Women is one of my all time favorite films. Diane English's 2008 Women is a mildly diverting chick flick that is less a remake of George Cukor's film and more like Ice, that episode of The X-Files where they did their own version of The Thing. Diane English's film is essentially a Sex & the City episode based on the screenplay for The Women, the basic plot machinations are similar, many of the sets are the same, but it's not the same film. When the first film credited the women under their husband's names (i.e., "Mrs. Stephen Haines" instead of "Mary"), it was being sarcastic. Here, we're introduced to the characters...by their expensive shoe brands.
That's the big shift of the film that weakens its power: where the original mocked its aloof, jittery characters who based their lives around fashion and men (and how much empty nonsense filled their lives), this film, like its contemporary inspiration, wants you to sympathize with them and think of them for two hours as your girlfriends, mmhmm. Meg Ryan and Eva Mendes do okay-decent-I-guess jobs with their antagonistic roles, and does fix the one (less-than-serious) problem that kept driving me nuts with the original film: that both Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were woefully unattractive. The biggest problem with the Sex & the City replacement characters (which, guess what, there are a core of four of) is that the golden girl of the original's cast, Sylvia, has been taken from the gloriously obnoxious character Rosalind Russell essayed, and turned into a fragile, weeping, less-promiscuous Sam from S&tc, played by Annette Benning.
The film proceeds in this vein, revolving completely about addiction to materialism and obsessive reliance on men, to the point that it almost becomes reverential, and even as a man, I started to get uncomfortable FOR women, who are being taught that pricks are Prada are the only things that women should desire, even if Bette Midler ambles in to tell Ryan to "be selfish" (and smoke a joint) during the wildlife retreat that was the original film's madcap centerpiece (which feels awkward in its placement, very remake-y, anyway). The entire film is about women having to make sacrifices and 'get over' any dalliances by the men, and completely falling apart without that companionship, and it paints the film into its corner during its exhausting hospital finale that ends up being apropos of nothing.
It's hard to focus on the positives, or have a lot to say about it because it's so glaringly inferior to its namesake, but, like the Sex & the City movie, the film does occasionally run into an entertaining sequence, or a worthwhile interaction, or even just a funny line. The cast, which is incredibly stacked, not only Ryan, Bening and Mendes, but Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith, and small roles by not only Midler but Candice Berger, Carrie Fisher, Debi Mazer, and Cloris Leachman, who, as usual, has some stuff that is quite amusing, albeit in an underused capacity, and even with the troublesome subtext, it has several effective, "aww, you guys" hug-and-cry dramedy moments, and, being a full fifty minutes shorter than Sex & the City, I'd say it earns about the same score.
{Grade: 6.5/10 (B-/C+) / #25 (of 97) of 2008}
That's the big shift of the film that weakens its power: where the original mocked its aloof, jittery characters who based their lives around fashion and men (and how much empty nonsense filled their lives), this film, like its contemporary inspiration, wants you to sympathize with them and think of them for two hours as your girlfriends, mmhmm. Meg Ryan and Eva Mendes do okay-decent-I-guess jobs with their antagonistic roles, and does fix the one (less-than-serious) problem that kept driving me nuts with the original film: that both Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were woefully unattractive. The biggest problem with the Sex & the City replacement characters (which, guess what, there are a core of four of) is that the golden girl of the original's cast, Sylvia, has been taken from the gloriously obnoxious character Rosalind Russell essayed, and turned into a fragile, weeping, less-promiscuous Sam from S&tc, played by Annette Benning.
The film proceeds in this vein, revolving completely about addiction to materialism and obsessive reliance on men, to the point that it almost becomes reverential, and even as a man, I started to get uncomfortable FOR women, who are being taught that pricks are Prada are the only things that women should desire, even if Bette Midler ambles in to tell Ryan to "be selfish" (and smoke a joint) during the wildlife retreat that was the original film's madcap centerpiece (which feels awkward in its placement, very remake-y, anyway). The entire film is about women having to make sacrifices and 'get over' any dalliances by the men, and completely falling apart without that companionship, and it paints the film into its corner during its exhausting hospital finale that ends up being apropos of nothing.
It's hard to focus on the positives, or have a lot to say about it because it's so glaringly inferior to its namesake, but, like the Sex & the City movie, the film does occasionally run into an entertaining sequence, or a worthwhile interaction, or even just a funny line. The cast, which is incredibly stacked, not only Ryan, Bening and Mendes, but Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith, and small roles by not only Midler but Candice Berger, Carrie Fisher, Debi Mazer, and Cloris Leachman, who, as usual, has some stuff that is quite amusing, albeit in an underused capacity, and even with the troublesome subtext, it has several effective, "aww, you guys" hug-and-cry dramedy moments, and, being a full fifty minutes shorter than Sex & the City, I'd say it earns about the same score.
{Grade: 6.5/10 (B-/C+) / #25 (of 97) of 2008}