Movie Review: The Women

By Priscilla Beth Baker
September 30, 2008
Running time 114 minutes
Written and directed by Diane English
Starring: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith

It's difficult to imagine a film that can make even Annette Bening look bad, but The Women is that film.  Writer and director Diane English sought to re-make George Cukor's 1939 classic of the same name.   Having not seen the original, I can only speak to the tedious, dull disaster that is the second one.

Meet Mary Haines (Meg Ryan), a talented fashion designer who has settled for working for her father's company making sketches instead of following her own dreams, but seems quite happy to do it until her father fires her. Things change too when Saks manicurist (Debi Mazar) gossips to Mary's best friend Sylvie (Annette Bening) about Mary's husband Steven and his affair with perfume spritzer-girl Crystal (Eva Mendes).

Thus is the trajectory of our heroine:  successful man dumps beautiful wife for younger beautiful woman; woman's life falls apart (and we know this because she won't get out of her pajamas and she eats a stick of butter dumped in cocoa powder and milk); woman gets life back together (with new fashion business and better hair); man wants newly successful wife back; newly successful wife considers his proposal but asserts her needs this time around. 

How many times have we seen this story?  I can't count that high.  But I can tell you that this is very possibly one of the worst versions of this story I have ever seen.

Aside from Sylvie, Mary also has two other pals to lean on in this trying time: lesbian writer Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith) and the eternally pregnant Edie (Debra Messing).

Neither of these actresses receives any screen time worth mentioning and their talents are completely wasted.

From the first moment of the film, the dialogue feels painfully forced, almost as if the actresses are reading from sideline cue cards because they haven't quite memorized their lines yet.  I had to keep reminding myself what a talented cast English had assembled and the only reason I could come up with that even these actresses couldn't deliver their lines with any sense of commitment or believability, is that the script was, frankly, a ridiculously trite mess and there was no way to prevent the inevitable disaster.

There is not one believable female relationship in this film.  You know they are trying really hard to manufacture these bonds, because that's what all good actresses do, but all the audience gets is a string of pointless monologues full of overbearing sentiments.

English seems to be using each of these actresses as a vehicle to deliver every feminine cliché that exists, strung together in awkward and totally inappropriate moments.

Interestingly, there is not one male character present in this film (unless you count Debra Messing's much-sought-after-too-many-girls-baby boy who is delivered in the corny climactic final 15 minutes).  The elusive Mr. Haines is only spoken of (not kindly), Sylvie has no time for a man with her lucrative fashion magazine editor career, Edie is apparently raising these multitudes of children alone and Alex--well, she's a lesbian for good reason. I found this lack of a male presence especially ironic because men are all these women talk about!

The absence of men, I'm sure, was intentional, so that English could focus on the poignant and meaningful nature of female friendships.  But rather than illustrate that point, it insults it, reducing these potentially vibrant women to nothing but a farce, and not even a funny one at that.