The Stepford Wives - 06/11

[Broadway]

Just saw a late matinee of this movie after work. Fun movie with a lot of laughs, but...

my biggest complaint is that the movie was incredibly SHORT! I got there at 445 and decided to still buy the 440 ticket thinking there would be at least 5 minutes of previews, right? Run in and take my seat... and the movie didn't start until just before 5! I was out of there by 6:20.

I think many kids movies are longer than this movie was. I would have been upset had I paid $8.50.

[libra1022]

I caught this one finally and actually really liked it, as did my friends. I haven't seen the original, but they had and agreed that it was very different, yet still good in it's own right.

I had already read about the Cusack replacements, and I can see how both of them would have been extremely good in their parts, but Bette Midler was just GREAT in her role IMO. Joan has the quirkiness to pull it off as well, but it just seemed made for Bette.

As long as you go in not expecting a total blockbuster, it is good fun, sort of a dark comedy. Thumbs up from me.

[deny]

Nicole looks as though she has had some work done to her eyes recently. She looks different.

[WomynLee]

Nicole looks as though she has had some work done to her eyes recently. She looks different.

Did you notice that her forehead hardly moves? Must be the wonders of Botox.

[Brandy]

If anyone saw her in Birthday Girl, tell us what you thought.

She was interesting in it oddly enough.

For some reason, and I have no idea why really, I like her much better since she and Tom C split up. Maybe the frost melted just a bit ?

She used to reaalllly bother me to the point I didn't even wanna watch her in films - she just seemed to have no believability, no 'there' there. She seemed like a Stepford "after", basically. Not much behind the eyes - experience, passion, hurt, regret.

Sadly enough maybe she has all that now.

In any case, in Birthday Girl she is a Russian mail-order (internet?) bride who isn't quite what she seems. It's a fairly dark movie in a way. She pulls it off. Since she spends part of the movie speaking in Russian she has to act quite a bit with just her eyes... (well not JUST her eyes... but she can't rely on the dialogue). She pulls it off, this time there is a 'there' there.

(That sounded pretty strange. Lol hope it made sense)

I also bought her portrayal of a less than sympathetic character. Maybe that's the other thing she's done right lately - chosen characters who are a little less cookie cutter susie homemaker... She just seemed to freeze up entirely in those types of roles. Playing someone who isn't very nice though, she fares better.

So I'd say "Birthday Girl" is worth a rental.


** P.S. I know "To Die For" was before her divorce... That movie was so well written & directed though, the focus wasn't so entirely on her as in some of the earlier Hwd. pap she was in. The movie was complex *for* her.

[Matt64]

I totally agree with you Brandy. As awful as it sounds.. since she split with Tom, she's really come into her own. To Die For (one of my favorites) aside, she really hadn't done anything spectacularly well until after she and Tom split, and then everything just fell into place. As odd as it sounds, I think she needed a little more life experience.. because I mean.. how difficult or trying a time could she possibly have had while married to Tom Cruise? Around the time before they split, you could tell that she had lived a little more. She and Tom were likely having issues.. she was being really run through the tabloids because of Eyes Wide Shut.. and then after all that, she goes and films both Moulin Rouge and The Others, and you could tell she had been through a lot by that point. Then after the split, she gets to work on Birthday Girl and The Hours and Human Stain.. and you can see that this is a woman who has lived, and has experiences from which to draw from.