This review contains spoilers for both this movie, and the original, "The Stepford Wives."
Even a horror comedy can have a cohesive story line. This story is more than convoluted. It's bastardized. It's completely lost.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this movie. It's fun and it's funny, and there are some strong moments between Kidman and Broderick. Everyone put in good performances. But the direction was non-existent. I mean, come on. They didn't transplant the brains into robotic bodies. They simply couldn't make up their minds as to what they wanted to DO. So we ended up with a horrible mess. A fun mess, but still a mess.
I totally believe that whole transplant device was invented after the fact and was never a part of the original storyline. I read the reviews and movie news and this movie was plagued with problems. Script problems, personality problems, emotional problems, set problems; you name it.
And it definitely shows.
In the original movie (don't know, don't care who saw it), the wives were murdered in pure cold blood, and replaced by robots. In the remake, they wanted a lighter theme than the cold-blooded murder of these women, so after filming the women like they were going to be robots, they began shooting them like they were altered, rather than replaced.
In the remake, they wanted desperately for the women to be able to be "changed back," to be given their minds again. They wanted to redeem the male species of these atrocities of the original work, and thereby, they ruined their whole effort.
The story got more than lost between all the arguing between producers and staff, etc. and this hodge-podge is what we got stuck with.
They cut the Bette Middler/lawnmower scene because they changed their story line half way through the movie and no longer wanted to portray her as THAT robotic, but more "altered" instead. It didn't work. Once they gave us a human ATM machine who was controlled with her own personal remote, it was too late to turn around and sell the audience on the whole watered-down chips-in-the-brain premise (which was lame as all H3LL anyway), and expect us to buy it.
So basically, they just said screw it, slapped it together and handed it to the fans.
The movie made no sense because the movie was the first half of one movie, and the second half of a totally different movie.
They should have sacrificed some of the low-brow humor for a more intelligent pass on this film, IMO. Had they had the cajones to actually "ring the bell" (by killing off the wives as in the original) with this attempt, the Bette Middler/Lawnmower scene could have been left in and this movie would have made a lot more fans happy.
The one thing I *did* find refreshing was the inclusion of the first gay Stepford couple. It's about time Hollywood moved in to include everyone and not just the purely redneck, white bread, mainstream, over-christianized Americans. Nice touch. Too bad the rest of the movie wasn't as progressive.
Although I highly recommend watching the original over this one, it's still a fun endeavor, however, and rates a 6.1/10 from...
the Fiend :.
Even a horror comedy can have a cohesive story line. This story is more than convoluted. It's bastardized. It's completely lost.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this movie. It's fun and it's funny, and there are some strong moments between Kidman and Broderick. Everyone put in good performances. But the direction was non-existent. I mean, come on. They didn't transplant the brains into robotic bodies. They simply couldn't make up their minds as to what they wanted to DO. So we ended up with a horrible mess. A fun mess, but still a mess.
I totally believe that whole transplant device was invented after the fact and was never a part of the original storyline. I read the reviews and movie news and this movie was plagued with problems. Script problems, personality problems, emotional problems, set problems; you name it.
And it definitely shows.
In the original movie (don't know, don't care who saw it), the wives were murdered in pure cold blood, and replaced by robots. In the remake, they wanted a lighter theme than the cold-blooded murder of these women, so after filming the women like they were going to be robots, they began shooting them like they were altered, rather than replaced.
In the remake, they wanted desperately for the women to be able to be "changed back," to be given their minds again. They wanted to redeem the male species of these atrocities of the original work, and thereby, they ruined their whole effort.
The story got more than lost between all the arguing between producers and staff, etc. and this hodge-podge is what we got stuck with.
They cut the Bette Middler/lawnmower scene because they changed their story line half way through the movie and no longer wanted to portray her as THAT robotic, but more "altered" instead. It didn't work. Once they gave us a human ATM machine who was controlled with her own personal remote, it was too late to turn around and sell the audience on the whole watered-down chips-in-the-brain premise (which was lame as all H3LL anyway), and expect us to buy it.
So basically, they just said screw it, slapped it together and handed it to the fans.
The movie made no sense because the movie was the first half of one movie, and the second half of a totally different movie.
They should have sacrificed some of the low-brow humor for a more intelligent pass on this film, IMO. Had they had the cajones to actually "ring the bell" (by killing off the wives as in the original) with this attempt, the Bette Middler/Lawnmower scene could have been left in and this movie would have made a lot more fans happy.
The one thing I *did* find refreshing was the inclusion of the first gay Stepford couple. It's about time Hollywood moved in to include everyone and not just the purely redneck, white bread, mainstream, over-christianized Americans. Nice touch. Too bad the rest of the movie wasn't as progressive.
Although I highly recommend watching the original over this one, it's still a fun endeavor, however, and rates a 6.1/10 from...
the Fiend :.