In a year jam-packed with remakes, we have yet another bad one: The Stepford Wives. The film, based on Ira Levin's novel, adapted by Paul Rudnick and directed by Frank Oz, certainly tries a new direction, but the story's basis is still stuck in the 1970s. Today, it simply doesn't make sense.
The 1975 film, adapted by William Goldman and directed by Bryan Forbes, treated the story as horror, saving the most astonishing surprise twist until the finale. Now the film is a comedy, and the surprise is revealed in the first act.
The tale begins when a high-powered Manhattan television executive, Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman), loses her job. She, along with her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) and two kids, packs up and moves to Stepford, Connecticut.
In Stepford, all the women wear short housedresses and high heels. Most of them are blond and live only to clean and serve their husbands. Walter joins a men's club run by Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken) and his bubbly wife Claire (Glenn Close), and soon learns of their nefarious plot to turn all the women of Stepford into subservient bimbos.
When Levin wrote The Stepford Wives, it was a tongue-in-cheek response to the newfound women's liberation movement. It played upon men's fears that they were losing power as women moved into the workplace and became breadwinners. But haven't we moved on from this era of Betty Crocker and subservient wives? Why did we need this film in 2004?
Oz gives the new film a bright, pink-tinged look but doesn't manage to imply the menace underneath. It's as if he's baffled by the humor, bending over backward to explain it to us as he goes. He's not helped by Rudnick, a great gag writer but poor screenwriter. Rudnick contributes half a dozen real laughs in the film, but they're all one-liners, completely disassociated from the story. He has no interest in figuring out why he's telling his story, nor is he particularly invested in any of the main characters.
Even the army of people responsible for sustaining Nicole Kidman's image has missed the point. In the early scenes, Kidman looks skinny, haggard, pinched and drained. She has a short little flip of dark hair and looks like she's about to explode. Later, she sports a mane of gorgeous blond hair and looks relaxed for the first time. And the studio is using this latter image—the Stepford image—to advertise the picture.
That's frightening, more frightening by far than anything the filmmakers can come up with. It says we have a kind of Stepford right here and now. It's called Hollywood.