The Stepford Wives opens with an elegant depiction of beautiful and perfect ’50s housewives in the opening credits. It goes downhill from here. Joanna Eberhard (Nicole Kidman) is a successful woman in the television industry, which is extremely difficult to believe when the clips of the shows she created are depicted as cheap reality show knockoffs. She is fired from her job when an unhappy reality show star goes on a killing spree due to the outcome of a show, and attempts to kill Joanna. While some wish the bullet didn’t miss, the unemployed survivor moves from New York City to the suburbs of Connecticut with her supportive yet envious husband, Walter Kresby (Matthew Broderick), and two children.
Something is fishy about the town of Stepford, and Joanna along with new friends Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler) and Jerry Harmon (David Marshall Grant) seem pretty dim-witted as they struggle to figure out what. All the wives look like celebrities while all the husbands are dorks. Weird glitches like Sarah Sunderson’s (Faith Hill) spinning uncontrollably and sparking out of the ears while dancing spur the curiosity of the newcomers to this upper class neighborhood. So many things don’t add up-a corpse is displayed yet left unexplained when Joanna is supposedly becoming a “wife,” and Bobbie’s hand is miraculously left unharmed after she didn’t realize it was in a flame. A few chuckles will result from the comedic stylings of Midler and Grant-but this is subdued by the overall stench of odds and ends that don’t hold up and conclusions that are made far too quickly and simply. The modern aspect of Stepford Wives is a huge spoiler that does much more harm than benefit to the credibility of the film, and the laziness of Stepford Wives‘ screenwriter overpowers the film’s high points of witty jokes and eerie suspense.
The most embarrassing part of the movie is easily the ten-minute monologue given by the leader of the pack, Claire Wellington (Glenn Close), to end the film. Or is it the next scene-an interview with the three main characters on Larry King Live, describing what they had been up to the past six months. I refuse to call this an ending; it was an easy excuse for one. What was the influential cast of Stepford thinking when they signed on to this one? Apparently not much. Don’t make the same mistake-give it some serious thought before you step into the peculiar town of Stepford.
