The Women: Movie Review (2008)

Written and directed by Diane English, 114 minutes, rated PG-13.

It takes ovaries the size of Alaska to update a classic like George Cukor’s 1939 catfight “The Women,” but that’s just what Diane English has done--and nobody should thank her for it.

Certainly not women, who instead should turn to reruns of “Sex and the City” or, hell, to “The Golden Girls” if they want to have a good time with a clutch of female friends who had more to say about what it means to be a woman in today’s world than this irritatingly whiny movie does.

English based her script on Clare Boothe Luce’s play by way of Anita Loos and Jane Murfin’s original screenplay. Essentially, she murdered them both with banality and kindness, which is odd since English created the edgy and once-relevant television series, “Murphy Brown.”

Apparently, time away from her pen has softened its tip.













Oh, there are a few laughs here and there, and it’s nice to see that 47-year-old Meg Ryan, looking like a 30-year-old Muppet, has finally fallen into her facelift. But other than that, this disappointing comedy about the ramifications of what happens when sweet Mary Haines (Ryan) learns that her husband is having an affair with a sexy perfume girl named Crystal (Eva Mendes) all but neuters the necessary, cutting meanness that made the original such a bitchy delight.

Joining Ryan in the comedic dreary is a fine cast, all of whom, for the most part, are less loose to starve in a pasture free of wit and bon mots. Annette Bening is a dull magazine editor (she has the Rosalind Russell role, but she’s no Rosalind Russell); Debra Messing huffs and puffs, and produces bales of children; Jada Pinkett Smith is a hot-to-trot cougar lesbian; Debi Mazar does nails and gossip.

An underused Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen liven up the proceeding a bit, but that’s probably because they’re old enough to remember that the original had substance within its run of stinging barbs, and also a free-wheeling air of camp. All three bring each.

One of the chief reasons Cukor’s movie worked as well as it did is that in real life, there was no love lost between Joan Crawford, who played Crystal, and Norma Shearer, who played Mary. Read any biography about either woman, and it’s so well documented that they loathed each other, this turned out to be a boon for Cukor’s movie, which felt alive with authentic tension because of it.

Not so for English, who is stuck with Ryan and Mendes, two women who, in this tepid remake, might as well be slapping each other will pansies in comparison.

Grade: C-