The Stepford Wives (dir. Frank Oz, 2004)
So it makes sense that The Stepford Wives be transformed into a broad slapstick comedy. The threat of forced domesticity no longer holds as powerful a cultural sway in America, and the average man perhaps no longer craves that sort of wife anyway. What Frank Oz’ remake does is transform all the women into high-powered, high-paid bread-winners in black suits and severe haircuts. They are judges, authors, CEOs and TV execs. The men, meanwhile, are all small, pale wimpy dudes played by timid and crass actors like Matthew Broderick and John Lovitz. We’re still dealing with complex notions of gender dynamics and the place domestic ideals have in the modern world, but it’s a bit more obvious, and even gender-flipped.
Wimpy men are tired of being the underdogs, when their own cultural heritage demands they be rulers. The women, meanwhile, find everything to be perfect. They are sniping, aggressive ball-busters and they like it that way. In the film’s funniest scene, Broderick confronts his wife, played by Nicole Kidman: “Only high-powered, neurotic, castrating, Manhattan career bitches wear black. Is that what you want to be?” he asks. Her earnest response: “Ever since I was a little girl.”
Kidman plays Joanna Eberhart, a high-powered TV exec whose reality shows are all designed to break up marriages and force women to realize how much better they are than men (example show: “I Can Do Better”). When she is suddenly fired after a contestant kills someone, she has a nervous breakdown, and her husband (Broderick) moves them to Stepford, CT. The Men’s Association, led by Christopher Walken, soon moves in to convince him that it would be a keen idea to turn his ball-busting wife into a robot slave.
Joanna, meanwhile, has befriended the local foul-mouthed wildchild Bobbi (Bette Midler), and, just to make sure we’re modern, gives them a gay sidekick named Roger (Roger Bart). That Roger, also unhappily married, is eventually Stepford-ized by his husband speaks more about gay culture than the feminist messages in this film. It’s okay to be gay, just so long as you’re not visible or open or gay about it.
The Stepford Wives seems like it was made by committee. Plot points never play out, and there’s a third act that seems tacked on. Also, the film can’t ever decide if the Stepford slaves are supposed to be brainwashed humans, or robots. We see wives sparking out of their ears, and men can control them with hand-held remote controls, implying that they are indeed machines. One of them has adjustable breasts, and another can spit up dollar bills up through her neck. We even see a hairless robot body of Nicole Kidman in one scene. But then in other scenes, Walken describes the slave-making technique as involving computer chip implants in the brain, and that a real body is required. The process can also eventually be undone, flipping the women back when the master computer is destroyed.
Glenn Close is in it too.
There’s more to it, but the film is bad and I don’t want to bore you with details of something you shouldn’t watch. Let’s wrap up.
