The Women (12a)

The most recent chick-flick to hit our screens features an exclusively female cast, and is fittingly titled The Women. A remake of the 1939 hit, this updated version stars Meg Ryan as Mary Haines, a wealthy woman with an enviable life, whose world comes crashing down as she discovers her husband has been having an affair. With the advice and support of her friends, magazine editor Sylvie (Annette Bening), lesbian writer Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith) and full time mum Edie (Debra Messing), Mary is forced to come to terms with her husband’s betrayal in what is intended to be funny circumstances.

The film feels like it wants to be inventive and fresh. Mary’s daughter clumsily tackles the issue of the Size Zero culture, questioning why skinny models appear on magazines, in a transparent effort to appear relevant. It’s not new or interesting for the audience to hear (it was addressed it in TV series Ugly Betty only the week before!) and this lack of innovation is something that the film as a whole suffers from. A similar film that contains leading ladies is Sex and the City: The Movie, and in comparison The Women sadly lacks the sparkle and humour that SATC delivered so well. The film seems to try too hard to make the audience like and identify with its characters, whereas the SATC film starred women who we already knew and loved.

An unintentionally amusing aspect of the film is the numerous mentions of plastic surgery and the excessive usage of it. The fact that Meg Ryan’s once beautiful face is now so very stiff and strangely puffy, due to being surgically enhanced, is wryly ironic and a happy distraction from the unentertaining script. Although sympathy is felt for Ryan’s character, it struck me when looking at the beautiful Eva Mendes that she also was probably a more attractive distraction for the husband, away from his wife whose face could have been constructed from play-dough (ouch – Ed).

“There’s a name for you ladies, but it isn’t used in high society – outside of a kennel!” is a line that was used in both versions of The Women and might have still been amusing if the unmentionable word wasn’t now in our everyday vocabulary. This is just one example of the difficulty in bringing a script from 70 years ago up to date, and ultimately it would only be either a big hit or a complete miss. Unfortunately, the good acting of the cast is let down by the film being so unbelievable and predictable, and the simple conclusion is that it barely raises a chuckle.

by Laura Sivewright

Tags: The women