The Women (2008)

After the parade of botox, lip plumpers, Nar­ciso Rodriguez fash­ion and beau­ti­ful sets, all I was left with was this quote. “I am the man I want to marry.” Annette Bening’s char­ac­ter “Sylvie” smartly answers to Meg Ryan’s “Mary Haines” telling her “one day she would meet the man she would want to marry.”

That was the only mod­ern twist on this old gem of George Cukor’s 1939 Orig­i­nal. But this is 2008. Even the play’s orig­i­nal author, Claire Boothe Luce would be Diva enough to know it would take more than this to hold it’s own against Sex & the City.  To be fair, the new ver­sion of The Women had a lot to live up to. The orig­i­nal was such a land­mark pro­duc­tion. All female cast. Norma Shearer –the queen of Hol­ly­wood at that time-as Mary Haines and Joan Craw­ford as the ven­omous Crys­tal Allen. Ros­alind Rus­sell as Mrs. Howard “Sylvie” Fowler, the socialite that took joy in oth­ers prob­lems and couldn’t help but to stir the pot. Yes, to live up to a clas­sic is next to impossible.

The new ver­sion had 3 bits of per­fect casting.

Eva Mendes as Crys­tal Allen. She is Jes­sica Rab­bit come to life. The cast’s reac­tion to her in the movie is pretty much what I sus­pect any of us would do if we saw a crea­ture like this out­side of a mag­a­zine cover. Jaw-dropping.

Debi Mazur as Tanya, the man­i­curist, who blithely passes on rumors and gos­sip that shat­ters peo­ples lives while pol­ish­ing their nails Jun­gle Red.

Bette Midler who was totally under­used as Leah Miller, known as “Count­ess” in the orig­i­nal. When Ms. Midler’s unmis­tak­able voice was heard, I imme­di­ately thought, well here we go, this thing is start­ing now. But alas, she was on screen for about 5 min­utes. And that was poorly written.

I was really look­ing for­ward to this movie. It had every­thing going for it. Great trailer, sound bites, good cast, fash­ion, beau­ti­ful locations/sets…what could go wrong? I would sum it up into chem­istry. Annette gave it her best, but there was just no con­nec­tion to Meg Ryan. The writ­ing was uneven vary­ing from mod­ern to weak throw­back lines to the orig­i­nal ver­sion. They couldn’t decide how to go at this. Make a fresh new ver­sion, throw in a les­bian or two to seem hip or rely on the 1939 ver­sion of mar­riage and wifely duties– which actu­ally should have been good for a few laughs but instead fell flat.

I will say Annette Ben­ing looked the best out of all the “slightly” older actresses. She looked real. How often do you hear that about a Hol­ly­wood actress? Another great line she had ” This is my face, deal with it!”

Diva Ver­dict: Rent the orig­i­nal and catch the new ver­sion on cable.