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List Price: $19.96 | | Label: New Line Home Video
Salesrank: 4375
Released: December 19, 2008 |
| Our Price: $5.25 |
| Used Price: $1.99 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Mothers, daughters, wives, friends: These are the women of The Women. Based on Clare Boothe Luce's Broadway success and the hit 1939 movie, this sparkling update (from Murphy Brown creator Diane English) set in Manhattan and featuring an all-star, all-female cast says a lot about what it means to be today's woman and all of it's funny! The story starts with beautiful, smart, accomplished Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) discovering her husband is cheating on her. It's a time when friends are needed, so Mary's gal pals (Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith and Debra Messing) and mother (Candice Bergen) rally round with advice, cocktails and shopping. The Wife vs. the Other Woman (Eva Mendes): Sharpen your claws for a timeless and wonderfully witty battle.
Description of The Women:
For fans of some of America's finest actresses, seeing a film with even one of the cast members of The Women would be a treat. But this remake of George Cukor's famed girl-trouble ensemble film features Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler, Carrie Fisher, Joanna Gleason, and Candice Bergen--whew!--making it a film that fans of these terrifically talented women can savor. The remake may not have the cat-itude or camp factor of the original, but so what? The cast's chemistry really shines; friendship is thicker than water, it turns out--even stronger than the ties that bind women to their men. Ryan is the good-girl Mary Haines, whose husband, she and her friends learn, is cheating on her with the stunning femme fatale Crystal (Mendes, in the Joan Crawford role)--"a spritzer" at the perfume counter. Quelle horreur! The other women rally around the hapless Mary, staging interventions, offering snappy advice, and plotting battles on behalf of their friend. But it turns out that Ryan's Mary isn't quite as fragile as she seems. Gimlets and girl talk--lots of both--go a long way toward getting our heroine through her crisis, and onto a new stage in her life that surprises her husband and more than one of her pals. And the laughs by the appearances of Midler and Bergen, especially, are worth watching the whole film for. --A.T. Hurley
The Women Reviews:
Awful 
2009-12-18 - Would be in negative stars if it were possible - THAT is how bad this movie is.
People mention overacting in other reviews, while that is there, how about little or no true story and trite dialogue being the huge killers. This wasn't even worth of a Lifetime movie, THAT is how bad it was.
The only saving grace is that I came across it on cable and didn't wast time and additional money by renting it, buying it or trekking out to a theater to watch it. Horrible movie.
Starts Strong, Ends With Sappy "Girl Power" Sentiment 
2009-12-12 - Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) is a successful housewife. Her busy schedule keeps her name on the lips of society and her daughter adores her, but it seems her husband is discontent. Steven Haines is having an affair with a perfume girl (Eva Mendes). Suddenly the gossip is out, and although her friends (Annette Benning, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith) try to help her deal with the pain of the situation, Mary decides to divorce her husband.
The movie starts strong. The dialogue is witty, the characters are energetic and interesting, and the plot moves along nicely. It is updated to modern times flawlessly, and these girls resemble the famous friends from Sex in the City.
Toward the end, however, the movie veers off into an alley of sentiment and turns into a full-on chic-flick. We see a woman become independent and powerful and achieve the dreams she never realized, made for audiences to shout "You go, girl!" in the background. Best friends have a fight and then cry together over their great relationship. It all culminates in a delivery room where women bond over the ability to have babies. Disgusting.
Still, this re-make is superior to that starring June Allyson and Joan Collins which is much less exciting in spite of how cheesy this one becomes.
It is always nice to see a great screen writer from the past appear in the credits of a film, even if it isn't a wonderful remake. However, it retains a lot of the great elements of the past. There are no men in his film, a gimmick ignored in the Allyson remake but a memorable part of the original. Also, the "jungle red" nail polish, the bathtub scene with Crystal Allen, and the lingerie scene (This one is quite a bit more risque).
literally no male actors in this?
2009-11-30 - So this comedy carries a chick flick to the feminist end:
there are actually no male actors. We only see the men as reflected
in their effects on the lives of the women.
You think that the friends are going to attack
the other woman at her perfume counter.
Solidarity breaks down when the magazine editors confirms
the break up to a gossip columnist.
The lesbian played by Jada Pinkett Smith is an accepted one of the friends
so that moral or religious superiority is also lost
by these defenders of the middle class womanhood.
I'm a long time Meg Ryan fan, so I enjoyed the movie,
but I can't say this is a high point for western culture.
i love it 
2009-11-19 - I already love the movie because it has Jada Pinkett in it and she is my favorite, although she is not seen throughtout the movie like the other cast members. This movie is a type of laid back movie that anyone can watch. It's not soft enough to be considered a chick flick, and certainly not hard enough to the point where all the boyz want to go and see it. I love the movie. It's comedy sure enough...I bought it used through Amazon and it arrived in 4 days of my ordering it.
Skip it
2009-11-10 - Well, with this terrific cast, I had my hopes up, the bad reviews notwithstanding, but boy, was I wrong. What a disaster from start to finish, with very contrived dialogue, poor direction and the actors looking like they were struggling to make the best of bad material. I was shocked that Diane English, a very talented and funny writer was behind this travesty. Definitely a waste of time - skip it!
