A remake of the original, starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken and Glenn Close.
Kidman plays Joanna, a high powered executive at a TV network with a string of hit shows. In the presentation of the upcoming season, a murderous participant from one of the pilots shows up, and his attempt to kill Joanna as well as his previous victims leads her to be fired by the network.
Broderick, her husband, moves her and their family to the eerily perfect upscale community of Stepford, Connecticut. There the women are strangely perfect and mannequin like, and the men enjoy things behind the doors of the Stepford's Men's Association. Joanna tries to fit in, and then tries to figure out what's really going on with the help of Bette Midler's Barbie Markowitz...
The movie is a mess though. While there are neat comedic bits, there is a large disconnect between what the nature of the Stepford Wives really are. The movie contradicts itself on their nature. One scene implies and shows the women as robots; whereas the reveal in the finale shows them as merely being controlled and still human. Deleted scenes show that the original direction the movie was taking seems to be the "robot" idea, and somewhere along the line, they changed the reveal in the ending..and cut out the scenes which implied robots,.but left in one scene which still shows a robotic wife.
Its a pity. With an appealing cast, I wanted to like the movie. This very sloppy approach ruins it for me, though.
Posted by Jvstin at February 11, 2008 5:23 PM