The Women: Heidi Martinuzzi's Review

cpparker — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:57:01 +0000

I just had to share this with you guys. This is Heidi Martinuzzi's (http://www.pretty-scary.net) EXCELLENT review of "The Women" I don't think she cared for it much.

’The Women’: Just don’t even bother okay?

I don't know what's more irritating: the new 90210,
which is just like the old one but with younger actors, skinnier
actors, meaner girls, and lots more Botox, or the crappy new remake of The Women?

I just interviewed the director, Diane English, and she has no idea her film is terrible. English wrote 37 episodes of Murphy Brown, and she has a reputation for being funny. Too bad her directing skills didn't make the grade with The Women,
which is not funny, boring, and mediocre. I was so disappointed in this
film that instead of taking the time to transcribe the crap that people
say at press days (you know nothing honest, just stupid generic white
bread crap about how great it is working with everyone); I'll just tell
you what I really think.

The Women
is my favorite film – of 1937. It starred Norma Shearer, and Rosalind
Russell won an Oscar for her portrayal of Sylvia Fowler, the evil
double-crossing society woman. Joan Crawford was hilarious and evil as
the seductress who lures away Mary Haines' husband Stephen. The
supporting cast was witty, dapper, dashing, and chock-full of
Cukor-executed timing and great writing. It's arguably sexist – the
wife who gets cheated on must scratch and claw to win back her
powerful, rich husband. But hey! The world was a sexist place in the
1930's. At any rate, it's an amazing little piece of fun classic 1930's
witty moviemaking that should be honored. It's especially famous for
having no men in the entire cast. Not even one.

It was remade in 1957 as The Opposite Sex
and starred Leslie Nielson and the irritating June Allyson as the
husband and wife who get torn apart by his affair with a sexy young
perfume counter girl (this time played by a young Joan Collins). This
time it was a musical. This time it sucked so badly you could cry. It
made the original play on which The Women was based, by Clare Booth Luce, look like The Iliad. Let's never speak of it again.

Now that it's the 21st
century they're trying to shove it down our throats once more, this
time with a bland, duck-billed Meg Ryan as a frazzled and rich woman
who gets cheated on. They're even trying to convince us Womenophiles
(you know, us chick critics who are always so damned excited about
women doing crap in Hollywood) that this film is good. Well, it's not.
I saw it. It stinks. It's directed by a woman! It has women over 40! It
still stinks.

The
first thing you're going to hear, when the reviews come out that the
film sucks, is that "critics are sexist because the women in the film
are over 40 (except for Eva Mendez, of course, who plays the young
seductress this time)" and "the critics don't like movies directed by
women!". Well, I will have to risk sounding like a hypocrite to all my
fellow women who work hard to get women's filmmaking vision "out there"
one way or another; this movie stinks because the script is bad and the
acting is bad and the director didn't do a good job. The reason people
will not like this movie has nothing to do with the fact that the
director was a woman and the cast is all women over 40.

Shall I tell you why I really didn't like this movie? Well, okay!

1) Meg
Ryan. She's terrible. There's just no other way to say it. Maybe she
knew how to act once, but now, like Julia Roberts, all she can do is
play herself just out of her trillion dollar trailer. Her face is so
severely disfigured from plastic surgery it's distracting, and her idea
of "acting" is to throw up her arms whenever she's upset and to shuffle
her feet. She plays the grieving woman with no grace, delicacy, or
facial expression. She only knows how to do base comedy and slip on
bananas. This is a film about feelings, and she
doesn't have it in her. BIG mistake on the part of casting. I think we
can all agree, as adults, that Meg Ryan's best performance to date was
in Top Gun when she was onscreen for a total of 5 minutes.

2) Jaida
Pinkett Smith plays the token black woman/lesbian in this film. She has
about 4 lines, and she delivers all of them with vilely stereotypical
husky rasp of a dyke on HBO. I feel embarrassed for her of her
performance in this film.

3) Meg
Ryan's daughter, played by India Ennenga, shows signs of developing a
serious eating disorder. More than once, her character claims she's
fat, that she's on a diet, that she wants to look like a model, and
that she wants to smoke to keep herself from gaining weight. Um, and
it's never addressed. Ever. It's laughed off as something all women
have to deal with. It's normal. I would have loved this film if, in the
midst of the martinis and female-hugs they suddenly discovered little
Molly dead because of an overdose of diet pills. But no such luck-
Molly is cured of her self-loathing by watching Mommy design clothes
for stick thin, anorexic… supermodels.?

4) To
"get her groove back", Meg Ryan's character borrows lots and lots of
money from her rich mother (played by Candace Bergen) to design a bunch
of ugly clothes and put on a fashion show. It works! Now, this movie is
about extremely rich people. Not ONCE do we hear about money. No "That
bastard, I'm divorcing him! I'll take everything he's got!" In real
life, as anyone can tell you (as you can probably tell me), the minute
Meg Ryan and her husband decided to split up there would have been
immediate issues about money. No one would be crying about broken
hearts. Divorce is about money. It is never mentioned. Someone keeps
paying the mortgage, paying the maid(s), little Molly's tuition, and
all of Meg Ryan's shopping bills. Everyone is fabulously wealthy.
Everyone in this movie can suck my dick. Oh! Excuse me, I didn't mean
to be so crass.

5) Little
Molly: aside from her eating disorder, Little Molly is annoying. She is
spoiled, irritating, and doesn't care one iota about her mother's
happiness. The awful Cult Of Children built up in film and TV today,
where adults have to constantly pander to their crying brat's every
need, is sickening. Molly is only concerned that her mom isn't "cool",
and in order to be a "good mom" Meg Ryan has to spend thousands of
dollars putting on a fashion show to impress Molly. How about instead
Meg Ryan says, "Shut up Molly. You are SO lucky to have a huge house in
Connecticut and a pony and a private school and a puppy. Your father
cheated on mommy. Mommy is hurt. Mommy doesn't want to be with Daddy,
so get it through your thick skull that we're divorced. You could have
it a lot worse, you ungrateful bitch."

6) This
is not a film about real women. It's an annoying, patronizing,
simplified view of the intellect and emotional maturity of grown women,
just like Sex in the City, which is why The Women
will be reviewed just as scathingly. Real women are complex and
cultured creatures that can articulate more than one thought or belief
at any given time, and who, by the time they are 45, have developed
much more intense skills for handling betrayal and mild annoyances
between friends than are even hinted at in The Women. This film has the maturity and respect for women of a play about zebra unicorns written by a 10-year-old.

7) Eva
Mendez. She stinks. She's sexy, but she's about as funny as Jessica
Alba, which is like saying she's as funny as a dead cat in the road.
Or, to say it simply, she's not funny at all. That's detrimental in a
comedy.

I'm
not saying it's the worst film I have ever seen. It's not. And I'm not
saying there aren't any good parts. Chloris Leachman for instance, as
the maid, is funny. She may be the best thing in the film. And Annette
Bening is, for once, the least bland actress in the movie! Debra
Messing is very good as an ever-pregnant wife and mom and shows a
surprising ability to take on a new persona. But that's where the good
things end. Carrie Fischer's cameo as a gossip columnist is reminiscent
of the rumors about Marlon Brando just showing up and reading his lines
off of cue cards because he couldn't care less about Apocalypse Now.

Diane
English is severely out of touch with women. How can that be? She's a
woman. I don't know. But I was insulted by the simplicity and dumbing
down of The Women. And now will
come the tirade: "Why can't women over 40 ever be cast in multi-million
dollar movies?" "Why can't there be a female lead over 40?" and all I
can think about is "Stop Making shitty movies and maybe the movies will
make money". And THEN I think about the original The Women,
for which Rosalind Russell won her Oscar, which starred only women, and
how that was a great film that people love. And I also think about Steel Magnolias, Thelma & Louise, The Hours, Fried Green Tomatoes, and A league of Their Own and I realize that good films with women over 40 in them DO make tons of money. Generally, good films do. I also realize that Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl, Big, The Piano, Point Break, Little Man Tate, and countless others directed by women make tons of money.

Yes,
there are fewer female directors than men. Not all films made by women
make money. But I have a much simpler cure for how films with women
over 40 in them, and films directed by women, can get made more often
and make more money than by crying foul at sexism and critics: Stop
making shitty movies. Just stop. This version of The Women is shit. Anyone who says different is afraid of sounding sexist or betraying their fellow women.

The women

The Women: Heidi Martinuzzi's Review