Feminism ignored in ‘Stepford’

In theaters

THE STEPFORD WIVES, directed by Frank Oz, written by Paul Rudnick, 93 minutes, rated PG-13.

Back in 1975, when Ira Levin’s novel, “The Stepford Wives,” was a feel-good horror movie for men, women’s liberation was riding a crest, pop culture was immersed in working-girl chic, and alpha males everywhere were running like hell from all of it. For them, the idea of turning their newly headstrong wives into subservient, robotic slaves was as intoxicating as grabbing the brass ring in the bedroom, a necessary fix that would heal their threatened masculinity, get their dinner on the table on time, and improve their withering sex lives.

Now, three decades later, with two incomes necessary for most to support a family, here comes a new version of the tale. But what to do with a story line that seems so – well – 30 years ago?

For director Frank Oz, it wasn’t a horror movie he envisioned, but a $90 million black comedy, with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close and Christopher Walken rounding out the laughs. It’s tough to beat that cast, so it’s a drag that the movie lets them down.

As written by Paul Rudnick, who wields one of the cattiest

pens in Hollywood, this new version of “The Stepford Wives” suggests he might want to try a fresh pot of ink.

The film stars Kidman as Joanna Eberhart, a network executive fired from her job after one of her risque reality shows prompts an especially unhappy reality guest to open fire at a national gathering of network affiliates. Ruined, Joanna quickly falls into the sort of funk that requires rounds of electroshock therapy to snap her back to the world of the living.

When she’s fully functional, she finds that she, her two children, and her beleaguered, underachieving husband, Walter (Broderick), have moved out of Manhattan and into Stepford, Conn., a gated community that promotes perfection and family paradise.

Indeed, in Stepford, there is no crime, no poverty, no pushing. It’s a 1950s throwback with a modern twist – the women look like Maxim cover girls by way of John Waters and Betty Crocker. At the rows of mansions that line the streets, even the toilets are mindful, helpfully checking your urine each day for your percentage of body fat. And the wives, if you can believe this, actually have terrific sex with their husbands.

Clearly, something isn’t right in Stepford, and Joanna knows it – as do her new friends, Bobbi (Midler) and Roger (Roger Bart). But how to snoop under the watchful gaze of Claire Wellington (Close), the grinning matriarch who carefully guides Stepford’s women, and her husband, Mike (Walken), who runs the Men’s Association? How to get the dirt on Stepford without coming away soiled yourself?

From this, the movie packs only a handful of sharp one-liners, most of which are divided between Midler and Close, who do their best to steal the show. Close, in particular, is excellent. Otherwise, the film is an uneven, scattershot affair whose game cast clearly came to have fun, in spite of the script’s unwillingness to let them do so.

Other problems mar the production – a clunky ending, wish-washy directing – but in the end, what’s really missing here is a clear comment on the state of feminism and suburbia. Are they the great demons some feared them to be in 1975? The film doesn’t answer, and as such, it loses its edge.

Grade: C

On video and DVD

MYSTIC RIVER, directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Brian Helgeland, 137 minutes, rated R.

Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award-winning “Mystic River” tells the story of three boyhood friends divided by an act of sexual abuse in the early 1970s and then joined again in the present by murder. The film is slow going but precise, a bleak, working-class tragedy set in Boston that’s darkened by Shakespearean undertones.

Essentially a police procedural, the guts of which ultimately hinge on contrivance and coincidence, the movie embraces an independent filmmaking spirit, one that demands less flash and better acting than your typical whodunit.

The film opens with the surreal abduction of one of the boys by two pedophiles before fading to black and picking up their stories 25 years later on the eve of murder. There’s Dave (Tim Robbins), whose molestation as a child has turned him into a near zombie; Jimmy (Sean Penn), a proud dad hardened by two years in prison yet softened by a loving wife (Laura Linney) and family; and Sean (Kevin Bacon), the responsible homicide detective whose marriage is near collapse.

None are close, but all live close by, and when Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is murdered on the same night that Dave comes home with blood on his hands to his nervous wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), the movie’s core mystery builds, with Dave’s friend, Sean, and Sean’s partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne), on the case.

What ensues is good, occasionally powerful noir that’s been overhyped. This story of grief and revenge is indeed lifted by its performances, but it’s undermined by Eastwood’s failure to fully develop his female characters, and a pat plot hook involving a mute boy that’s a left-field stretch.

That said, Penn’s excellent, Academy Award-winning turn as Jimmy does generate unease. His guilt, rage and neighborhood absolution remain with you after the movie ends.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.