The Women.

"For [director Diane] English, The Women is undoubtedly (and mysteriously) a labor of love, but for Warner Brothers, its 2000-screen rollout is a cynical calculation that the same female audiences who turned out for The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City - starved of decent movies actually made for them - will choose to waste their hard-earned money on this dull and pedestrian bit of moviemaking instead of, say, contributing it to Hillary Clinton's debt relief," writes Chris Wisniewski in Reverse Shot. "This is the same brand of cynicism that landed everyone's favorite hockey mom on the national Republican ticket: women will be so happy to see themselves finally represented, on the stump or onscreen, that they won't really care about the substance of what they're seeing - the candidate doesn't have to be worthy; the movie doesn't have to be good; they simply have to be."

Updated through 9/15.

"Trailing negative buzz and a revolving door of A-list talent since its inception in 1994, Diane English's pudding of a remake of George Cukor's wicked 1939 satire of Manhattan socialites isn't so much incompetent as it is hopelessly tame and muddled," writes Ella Taylor.

"Point by point, writer-director Diane English has rethought the original in a seemingly intelligent way, and she provides three-dimensional roles for Candice Bergen, as [Meg] Ryan's mother, and Cloris Leachman, as her housekeeper, in parts that would have been mere token bits in most other films of this sort," writes Dan Callahan in Slant. "But English fails miserably when it comes to redoing Joan Crawford's shop girl role for Eva Mendes. The dramatic tension in Cukor's movie came from Crawford's identification with her working-class character, which is what made her a star in the proletarian 30s. In imperial 2008, however, Mendes, who has potential as an actress aside from her amazing looks, is treated as The Help, a sexual cartoon. Similarly, Debi Mazar's manicurist has none of the dumb-broad heart revealed in Dennie Moore's gossipy original; the young working-class women in this movie are treated with total disdain and contempt."

Henry Stewart in the L Magazine: "In the pre-war original, the heroine declares, 'My husband and I are equals!' In the 21st-century update, Meg Ryan, in the same role, boasts, 'I could suck the nails out of a board!' You go, girl?"

"[D]espite English's many fumbles, the movie earns points for at least trying to address a few issues beyond man-crazy shopaholic nirvana, and these ladies do, sometimes quite touchingly, look out for one another," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "All told, I'd rather spend time with these Women than with Carrie Bradshaw and co."

"Ms English has her feminist heart in the right place, and she mixes races and sexual predilections to populate Mary and Sylvie's circle with possibilities that the lily-white straight damsels of the movie 30s never imagined existed," writes Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer. "This contemporary broad-mindedness is admirable, but not sufficient to compensate for the lack of comic friction."

At the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell lists the "10 Worst Updates of 1930s Classics."

Updates, 9/12: "[I]t's a film that makes you wonder what someone with Michael Bay or Oliver Stone's subtlety might have done with it," writes Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon. "The weirdest element of the film, though, isn't its fevered pitch. It's that these smart, successful, got-your-back best pals don't even notice they're living in a dystopian nightmare where men are invisible."

"If The Women had managed to give its various impulses some kind of coherent shape or tone, it might be worth arguing about," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "As it is, the movie wanders and wallows, stumbling toward screwball before veering in the direction of weepiness and grasping at satirical urbanity along the way."

English "seems to want to convert her version of the play into a tract for our times; you know, something about the difficulties of having a family and a career simultaneously," writes Richard Schickel in Time. "But that does not address the piece's fundamental problem, namely that it is not now and never has been funny. Or even human."

"For his take on The Women, Cukor presented a stiff drink; the battle of the sexes writ large and verbose, with the less interesting gender left out completely," writes Chris Barsanti in PopMatters. "By comparison, English's version of this film barely nudges from its Martha Stewart interiors, exchanging insights for platitudes; it's a cup of lukewarm tea, without even a biscuit on the side."

"For all of SATC's failings, it at least had dialogue that could conceivably be heard on Fifth Avenue," notes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York. "Unsteadily directing for the first time, English (a creator of Murphy Brown) also wrote the screenplay, sucking all the venom and verve out of Anita Loos and Jane Murfin's adaptation of Clare Boothe Luce's play and trading it for Oprah-lite homilies, group hugs and, astonishingly, testimonials by the cast after the end credits roll."

"English's Women looks indifferent and sometimes purposefully ugly, presenting its stars - most of whom have achieved 'women of a certain age' status - as flatteringly as pasta salad in a deli counter," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club.

"The Women isn't a great movie, but how could it be?" asks Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Too many characters and too much melodrama for that, and the comedy has to be somewhat muted to make the characters semi-believable. But as a well-crafted, well-written and well-acted entertainment, it drew me in and got its job done."

"This new version of The Women fails to celebrate its characters as women," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "It patronizes the C-list cast of Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen as politically correct pawns."

"If this had been released two weeks ago, I wouldn't have been as distracted trying to force it into a political allegory," writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "The moment I saw Mendes, I thought, 'Sarah Palin!' ... influencing Stephen (the electorate?) against his best interests (Mary, the Democratic Party), who must reconcile with Sylvie (Hillary Clinton) after a betrayal. Or something. There's probably nowhere to go with that."

Kenneth Turan: "It's hard to say what's sadder, that The Women's intended audience had to wait 14 years for a film like this or that that long wait has been almost for naught." Also in the Los Angeles Times, Rachel Abramowitz profiles Ryan.

Update, 9/13: Erica Abeel talks with English for IFC.

Update, 9/14: At MSNBC, Alonso Duralde recalls "1956's The Opposite Sex, a disappointing attempt to inject men, music and Metrocolor into George Cukor's 1939 classic The Women.... Despite some amusing supporting performances by Dolores Gray and Joan Blondell, The Opposite Sex was a box-office bomb and was relegated to footnote status in film history. And yet, it's still better than the 2008's The Women, a film that tries so desperately to make the original 'modern' that it invalidates its own existence."

Update, 9/15: "Strange to say, Cukor's version is scarcely more seductive," writes Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "Unlike his other dramas of fine living, such as Dinner at Eight (1933) or The Philadelphia Story (1940), it leaves you in a bad mood, resentful of its characters. Depression audiences, lofted from their cares by the son et lumière of Katharine Hepburn flaring up at Cary Grant, may well have felt their noses being rubbed in it by the twitterings of Rosalind Russell and Norma Shearer in The Women, and so it is with their modern counterparts."

Posted by dwhudson at September 10, 2008 1:41 PM