The Women

The feature film remake of the 1939 movie version of Clare Boothe Luce's play The Women manages to fall squarely between two stools. Meant to be a thorough updating of the story, its bits of innovation are tripped up by the old plot—or perhaps vice versa. Why not reissue the original or write something new and independent?

Some historic reflections are in order. Back in 1939, there were movie stars. Today, there are only bankable actresses—or actors, as feminist performers like to call themselves. Why?

In 1939, there was no television, with its Lenos and Lettermans and the rest giving actors of either sex golden opportunities to display anything from ordinariness to airheadedness. Glamour, however, depends on making the glittering onscreen persona all there is, the illusion becoming the sole reality. Gossip columns and movie magazines, by the mere fact of being tangible print, enhanced the celebrity status.

There was, moreover, typecasting, so that someone like Norma Shearer, who played Mary Haines, the central character in this all-woman movie (a sensation in itself!), was always seen as glamorous—i.e., rich, elegant, refined—only departing from that mode to become Shakespeare's (rather overage) Juliet.

Meg Ryan, today's Mary, has revealed human frailty both onscreen and off. Nothing wrong with that, except that the aura of mystery, the halo of superhumanity, is gone. If the 2008 Mary has an errant husband, that is nothing special; in 1939, that was lèse-majesté. Pauline Kael wrote about "noble Norma Shearer weeping, weeping"; now there is no noble Meg Ryan, and one "weeping" covers it all.

Take the 1939 cast—Shearer surrounded by Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine—was there ever a more manifest constellation? Add the supporting cast: larger-than-life comedienne Mary Boland, earthily regional-sounding Marjorie Main (Ma Kettle!), famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, legendary Marx Brothers butt Margaret Dumont, high-society mother figure Lucile Watson, everybody's favorite zinger-spouting Other Woman Ruth Hussey, sexiest of starlets Virginia Grey, beloved child star Virginia Weidler—can 2008 equal that?

[IMG:R]Consider next the clever 1939 scenario by the now likewise legendary Anita Loos with Jane Murfin, "upon" which (as well as on the stage play) the remake, written and directed by Diane English, is based. That "upon" in the opening credits is a warning; with few exceptions, supplanting normal filmmakers' and human beings' "on," it heralds pretentiousness.

There is something too elucubrated about English giving Ryan long, curly hair while she is still Mrs. Stephen Haines, but when asserting herself and getting a divorce, suddenly long, straight hair. The director allows wonderful Annette Bening, as Mary's best friend and co-equal Sylvia Fowler, to look rather plain: Is this bad photography or merely luckless aging?

Another friend, Alex Fisher (Jada Pinkett Smith), is all too excogitatedly both black and lesbian. Always annoying Bette Midler, as Leah Miller, casually mentions among her many lovers Michael Douglas, making her less believable than ever.

English has cast Eva Mendes aptly enough as predatory Saks salesgirl and Stephen Haines' paramour Crystal Allen; but as philoprogenitive Edie Cohen, Debra Messing is too obviously a comic, even though she suffers convincingly in a harrowing childbirth scene. I don't think that India Ennenga, as Mary's daughter, Molly, is appealing enough.

The older actresses—Cloris Leachman and Candice Bergen as Mary's housekeeper and mother, respectively—come off best, but here, too, there are problems. Why does the Leachman character have a mostly idling Danish assistant (Tilly Scott Petersen)? Is she an au pair teaching Molly Danish? And a creepy scene at a facelift clinic, showing Bergen and other women wrapped up like mummies, is out of keeping with the rest.

English's script does have some funny lines, as when a character calls a scene "like something out of a '30s movie." At an editorial conference of a women's magazine, where Fowler (the Bening character) is in this version editor-in-chief, someone suggests an issue about the 45-minute orgasm, but is brushed off with everyone nowadays having no time for such a thing. A young editor (played by pretty and promising Jill Flint) suggests an issue on female revenge, which Fowler rejects only to pass off as her own idea to her publisher. Naughty, naughty!

Product placement thrives, whether as shopping bags from Gucci and Christian Louboutin, or in a scene where a small girl says she hates Saks and Bening kneels and intones with emphatic slowness, "Nobody hates Saks!" On the other hand, when Mary, here a "modest" fashion designer, holds an in-house show in what is surely the loftiest of lofts, plot demands prevent the actual designer, Narciso Rodriguez, from getting due credit.

And how cute is it when, at film's end, Messing's fifth baby proves a long-desiderated boy, and the film introduces for a few seconds its only male character? Intended as satire, The Women has about as much bite as a baby's mouth.