Analysis of The Stepford Wives :: The Stepford Wives Movies Film Essays

Analysis of The Stepford WivesMildly turn is about the best that can be said for The Stepford Wives, a retread so pointless it could be about as entertaining as daytime tv.. Adapted from Ira Levins chilling novel as a comedy, as opposed to the nifty 70s thriller which make the title a household phrase, the makers have missed out oneness crucial ingredient Laughs.Nicole Kidman (Moulin rouge, practical magic) plays Joanna, a burnt-out TV executive director who gets fired from her job and is driven to the 50s suburb of stepford, where rich, style-free, beau ideal awful men live with impossibly beautiful and servile women.As we arrive we already know that roughlything is suspect and its not upright the scriptThe original film, though far from flawless itself, stirred in the extra ingredient of sexual politics, playing on mens fear of powerful women abandoning the home for the workplace. In the 21st century Stepford, Kidman is a high flier whose career crash leads her to question m aybe Ive become the wrong kind of woman eon her hapless economise (Matthew Broderick) moans your whole attitude makes people want to kill you. Its an interest idea, that womens liberation has led to a different kind of servitude- to the boardroom not the bedroom. except it was never properly explored.To be honest, given real-life inequalities (and I know were talking movies here) in pay and conditions and the lack of women in high management its stupid to suggest the struggle for womens rights has been won.But it just isnt very entertaining, and social issues aside, this film has about as much consistency as a pancake stuck to the ceiling, for a while there it holds on to something but in the end it falls to the floor in pieces.The director Frank Oz assumes, probably quite rightly, that the audience knows wherefore the sisters of Stepford so slavishly serve their men, but the lack of surprise or suspense cruelly exposes a similar lack of decent jokes, some of which are chucke d in at the wrong moments, which could have otherwise saved a scene or two.