Sometimes we all wish for perfection. It's easy, when things aren't going well, to assume that everything would be better, if only.... Unfortunately, no matter how you end that sentence, whatever the change is, perfection would still be elusive. You would just be trading one kind of 'wrong' for another.

In the case of the 2004 movie remake of The Stepford Wives, the changes made to the story to 'update' it didn't make the movie any better. In fact, this movie is as artificial and robotic as the wives of the Stepford Estates.

"Only high-powered, neurotic, castrating, Manhattan, career-bitches wear black; is that what you want to be?"
Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) is a media mogul. As the high-powered executive producer of several top-rated TV shows, she's on top of the world. But when a reality show backfires and causes public embarrassment for her network, oh, how the mighty do fall.

In order to combat the severe depression and nervous breakdown his wife experiences after being fired, Walter Kresby (Matthew Broderick), Joanna's husband, decides it's time for the family to relocate. They move to the community of Stepford Estates in Connecticut where the houses are all completely automated, the husbands are all members of the men's club, and the women are all fit, perky, coifed, and devoted to their husbands' every wish.

The only saving grace for Joanna is her friendship with two other new 'wives' in town. Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler) is an award winning author who is obnoxious, bitter, and offended at the very thought of doing housework. Roger Bannister (Roger Bart) is flamboyant, shallow, and an embarrassment to his much more conservative partner. But while Joanna is genuinely trying to be a better wife and mother for her family, this trifecta of normalcy begins to fall apart. Roger announcing his run for office while wearing a 3-piece grey suit – and without a single highlight in his hair – is shocking enough. But when Bobbie suddenly decides that keeping a clean house is more important than working on her next book, Joanna realizes that she's the next target for this pervasive, boring evil...

"All the women around here are perfect, sex-kitten bimbos. All the men are drooling nerds. Doesn't that seem strange?"
The original version of The Stepford Wives was a wonderfully creepy thriller. This remake? Not so much. In fact, all the creep factor has been totally replaces with silly, campy moments that I found rather boring.

The characterization of women in this movie was obnoxious. There were no 'normal' women anywhere in the film. There are self-absorbed raving bitches who treat their husbands like chattel on the one extreme; on the other are the personality-free wives who do aerobics wearing fitted dresses with crinoline slips and live to pleasure their husbands in the middle of the day. In fact, the most normal person in the movie was Roger, the gay man who wore pink pants and thoroughly enjoyed singing Christmas songs in the middle of summer with the Stepford golems.

Completely gone from this movie are any sense of the suspense or fear that graced the original. Also gone are any characters that might remind you of someone you know – or someone you would want to know. Rather than a modernizing remake of a classic movie that strives to maintain the flavor of the original, this Stepford Wives comes across as parody, a spoof, a mere hollow shell of the original.

"I feel like Nancy Drew in 'The Mystery of the Mid-life Crisis."
While this version of The Stepford Wives is reasonably entertaining in its own right, it has none of the darker, more sinister overtones of its older sister. If you want to watch something light and frothy and silly, watch this version. But if you prefer movies with a little more depth, you will definitely want to stick with the original.


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This is an Again submission in my Then and Again writeoff. You can find it's companion Then submission here.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD