Movie of the week: “The Stepford Wives”.
SPOILERS!
I feel really bad for dragging two friends of mine to see this movie because hard as I tried to like it, “The Stepford Wives” is not a good movie. It’s too undecided between serious drama and over-the-top comedy. I enjoyed Bette Midler and I also think Nicole Kidman did a decent job but this role won’t win her any academy awards. Sometimes I felt reminded of her in the first half of “Moulin Rouge!”, which was an in-your-face comedy, sometimes she looks scared like her character in “The Others”. The script doesn’t take time to develop its characters and so decisions like if Walter will really turn Joanna into a robot come across as deliberate and more influenced by luck than anything else. Glenn Close is scary to the point were one can only believe she’s a robot while Christopher Walken looks a bit too out-of-space to fit into his role (especially his lion’s mane doesn’t help his role). And let’s not talk about the logic in the plot because there is none (how do these chips simply disappear? How does that work with the money from the mouth thing and lots of other stuff?). I liked the score, cinematography was okay and the credits were very imaginative. All in all however I’m not sure it was the right decision to turn it into a comedy. Leaves a lot to wish for, only mildly entertaining. Plus the movie poster is a total scam because Nicole Kidman only appears in two scenes looking like an angel. 2 out of 6 Meeps – disappointing.