One would like to think that with the abundance of formulaic potty-humor, male-driven movies that have come out in the last few years, there aren't female film equivalents that reach the same level of stupidity. Diane English's new film, The Women,"" just disproved that theory.
Avid, shameless fans of women-to-women movies were probably expecting ""The Women"" to be something more along the lines of ""The First Wives Club."" They would've even settled for ""Stepmom"" or ""Where the Heart Is."" In fact, there are dozens of women-to-women movies that are at least good guilty pleasures, even if they don't appease both genders. This is not one of them.
An adaptation of George Cukor's 1939 film with the same name, ""The Women"" was reconstructed by English - most known for her writing on ""Murphy Brown"" - who clearly has shown a knack for writing about strong, independent women in the workplace. It was confusing, then, that ""The Women"" feels empty and full of clichés, a parody of a post-""Sex and the City"" generation with women only as deep as the heels they wear and the Prada purses they fill.
The cast isn't the problem. At the center of everything is Meg Ryan, who plays Mary Haines. After she discovers, via a gossiping nail attendant at Saks Fifth Avenue, that her husband is cheating on her with the perfume-spritzer woman (Eva Mendes), her three best friends rally to her cause.
Among this ""Sex and the City""-wannabe quartet is the talented Annette Bening, who has clearly lowered her standards as an actress playing Meg's best friend, Sylvia. Debra Messing plays frazzled and pregnant Edie and Jada Pinkett Smith plays the feisty lesbian, Alex.
Such an ensemble of personalities would bounce off each other nicely if they didn't feel so forced. Lines like, ""I've accepted you as my token gay friend,"" leave the audience with caricatures of women, and not even interesting ones at that. Ryan is her usual lovable, blowing-up-her-bangs self while Messing and Pinkett Smith would be equally charming if the lines that came out of their mouths weren't so annoying. Not even the strong presences of Candice Bergen and Bette Midler can save the film.
English tries to touch on what it is to be a thoroughly modern woman in New York today, but surely it must mean more than being wealthy, working in fashion and curing any kind of heartbreak with a 5th Avenue shopping spree. She tries to manufacture enough relationships to fill the film with conflict, but Mary's relationship with her daughter and friendship with Syliva isn't put under any believable sort of strain to merit their flat dialogue.
One interesting concept of ""The Women"" is that no men appear for the entire runtime. It's an intriguing idea to explore, though, in this particular case, most women in the audience will leave the theater still searching for an all-women world that isn't completely dull and full of whining. Even the most ardent of feminists will be yearning for a male presence on screen five minutes in.
Grade: CD
