Movie Review - 'The Women'

The Women

Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Debra Messing
Directed by Diane English
Rated PG-13

As advertised, The Women has no male characters. Not one. There's not a passer-by, a waiter, or a cab driver in this movie that has a Y chromosome. We do get plenty of women, though - Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, and Eva Mendes are the principals, and we also see a fair amount of Cloris Leachman, plus a little bit of Carrie Fisher, Candice Bergen, and Bette Midler. Inarguably, this movie will attract crowds just for that reason. What a shame, then, there's absolutely nothing else to see here. The Women is trying to add a fresh coat of paint on an extremely popular TV show that scored huge numbers in theaters earlier this summer; think of it as Extramarital Sex and the City. That's not an oversimplification on my part, but rather on the part of writer-director Diane English, who has created four women of varying strength and experience and put them in New York City to explore their relationships. There's a powerful magazine editor (Bening), the lesbian (Pinkett-Smith), the bohemian baby factory (Messing), and the happily married clothing designer (Ryan). They talk about love and sex. How novel. But when we learn that Meg Ryan's happy marriage isn't so happy, and that her unseen husband has been fooling around with Eva Mendes, she begins to question everything: Should she try to work on the marriage or work on herself? Can she compromise and do both? Should she kick the scheming bastard to the curb? What's Eva Mendes got that she doesn't have? OK...maybe she doesn't need to ask herself that last question. Boiled down, that's all The Women is really about: What should Meg Ryan do now that her husband has cheated on her? Sure, there are subplots, like Bening's tenuous employment at the magazine and Messing's fifth pregnancy in what can't be more than seven years, and did we mention Jada Pinkett Smith plays a lesbian? Well, she is. And if you don't believe me, just ask her character; it's all she ever talks about. About now, you may be defending this film by saying that I'm a guy and what do I know? Of course I'd hate this. Come on: I really liked the first Traveling Pants movie. That should be all I need to say. However, I'll add that I deeply enjoyed the musical 8 Women, which not only had just as many female characters but was also a musical...in French, and that the original George Cukor film The Women, based on the Clare Boothe Luce play, is a far superior version of the exact same story. Minus the lesbian. Wisely, Diane English gave Cloris Leachman a handful of scenes. Even at 82, any movie featuring Leachman is improved by her performance. Unwisely, English had made less of a movie and more of a soft collection of independent scenes. Many of them go nowhere and all of them add up to a terribly insufficient ending.

Comments

[Ladii Phoenix]

Hey guys, check out this review from the Boston Phoenix for "The Women" fans: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Movies/68012-WOMEN/

[sara]

I can't wait. I have lived 29 years and seen maybe four movies that are female-centric and even less TV shows. Sure, there's romantic comedies, but those don't always count because it's usually all about him AND her, never a movie only about women. Oddly, Jada Pinkett Smith was in one of the four or five women- Set It Off. Definitely not a chick flick. I hate that term. Is Ocean's 11 a "dude flick"? Anyway, I do count Sex and the City on that list, and Beauty Shop, Chicago, Mad Money, Dancer in the Dark, Girl Interrupted, A League of Their Own, Tank Girl... though in one review published here in regards to a sequel of the blockbuster Sex and The City movie, some guy commented complaining "Why do the chicks get their due, but not the friggin dudes?" Um, three Bourne Identity movies, tons of comic book adaptations, and the fact that guys are almost ALWAYS the main characters in almost every movie...trust me, guys get their due. Boy, do they. Picture this: if guys mainly only had co-star roles with women in romantic comedies, and then only played the lead in maybe one or two movies every few years, and the rest of the films made starred mostly women (if not ONLY women), then you'd see how annoying it is when women's films are bashed by men so often. I mean really, what do you guys have to feel angry about when all you see or hear is yourselves on the silver screen?