The Women [Blu-ray]

Wealthy Mary Haines (Ryan) leaves her husband after she finds out from
her socialite friends he has been cheating with the attractive sales
girl Crystal Allen (Mendes) Ryan, Bening, Mendes, Messing and Pinkett
Smith are the stars in Diane English's adaptation of the hit 1939 hit
The Women. All these big stars have had their names printed in the
credits of some of the finest and memorable romantic comedy dramas over
the last few decades. When Harry met Sally, American Beauty and Hitch
to name just a few. So all have experience in the genre, all have won
our hearts in their previous respective roles and are all therefore
capable of regenerating their own personal magic, so why has the film
plummeted with fans and critiques? This film is undoubtedly targeted
towards women with an all female cast and concepts of dresses,
relationships and dealing with life. Fair enough. It is easy viewing if
your problems are reflected and managed in a different light and with
your favourite stars it should be a worthwhile view. But reflecting
realism is never the same with these films. The solutions appear too
easy to match the running time, the problems are far from the truth and
the inclusion of bad timing just generates a form of fantasy that
should be banned from screen.

The bottom line is that romantic comedies are so easy to make in recent
times. He's just not that into you or Love Actually are some previous
star driven previous releases that show films are woven around its
stars rather than the plot and lack realism because of it. Romantic
comedy dramas have the same generic style. Guy and girl get on fine;
problems arise with a series of sub plots before finding problem and
attempting a resolve. It just depends who you have to star that makes
the difference these days.

The Women is yet another perfect example of nonsense. Meg Ryan gets
depressed when her husband is caught cheating and her friends feel
guilty and her daughter doesn't respect her and she tries to balance
her career as well and etcetera. It's ridiculous to even contemplate
seeing this film when it's a carbon copy of every other romantic comedy
or drama with stars from the gossip magazines.

The plot is consistently flat and don't expect any humour to give you a
good night's viewing. Pinkett's lesbian and the talkative manicurist
may have your mouth twitching but that's as far as it goes.

Flat, utterly pointless and a waste of time, money and effort, The
Women is a perfect example of the ridiculous cinema trend that we have
entered.

1/10

The Women is an interesting one. It's the very chickiest of chick flicks inasmuch as, you won't glimpse a single chap on screen the entire time. You'll not even hear one on the phone... and you may not even realise until the end credits.

Oh, there's nothing particularly wonderful or particularly rubbish about this film. It's just inoffensive and tepid and a perfectly adequate way to spend a couple of hours. It's a tamer version of Sex and the City, really: 4 women doing lunch in New York before shopping. Except when Ryan's character discovers her husband is having an affair with a perfume spritzer (Eva Mendez who, admittedly, is bloody gawjus) her life starts to tumble down.

The focus of the film, though, is female friendship. It's an homage to the nature of friendship, and it's charming in that respect... it's just the ancillary stuff - affairs, prodigious pregnancies, lesbianism - that steers it back to standard chick-flickery and ultimately detracts from the real story.

The performances are uniformly good - none of the actresses are tested in any way, and it's all perfectly nice.

Best watched on a Summer afternoon with girly friends, sunshine and a glass of chilled white wine in hand.

Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were formidable in George Cukor's 1939 release of 'The Women', a play written by Clare Booth Luce. They had style, they had wit, they had passion. Diane English's remake has none of these except an exceptional cast of women. But, the script gives them nothing to play with. Redoes of famous films are always a little bit 'iffy' and this film from 2008 has gone off track. It is as if the actors were all play acting and playing they were, acting no.

Meg Ryan, plays Mary Haines, a wife and mother whose husband is having an affair with a perfume saleswoman, Eva Mendes, at Sachs. Her best friends,
Annette Benning, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith try to support her but everything is a mess and nothing is right. Mary's household comes undone when she orders her husband, Stephen out of the house. That is pretty much the sum of the film. Mary breaks up with her best friend, is a failure as a mother and wife, and all this forces her to get her act together. OK, over and done but a two hour version is two too many.

There is no chemistry, there is no real action, nothing comes together. Diane English, the creator of Murphy Brown has come undone here. Candace Bergen as Mary's mother is the best of the bunch and that is because she is Murphy grown-up.

Not Recommended. prisrob 05-05-13