And why only one copy of your wife?
Wouldn’t you have like three or four? And her little sister?
Oh, I absolutely disagree. Joanna’s character holds 100% of the audience’s sympathy; the husband is seen as a snivelling weakling who makes the wrong choices out of fear and sexual greed. (Hm; see *Rosemary’s Baby * for a Levin leitmotif.) Each woman’s defeat and replacement is framed as exactly that: a defeat; a loss. It’s 100% clear where Levin’s true sympathies lie: he has tremendous respect for the women, and absolutely none for the men.
Yes, the men are the villians but the very idea of The Stepford Wives is so ridiculous that it makes most of the JKF or UFO theories sound plausible. I’ve never read the book and it’s been awhile since I saw the original film. (3 years?)
But come on, they’re turnig us into robots? Most people can accomplish that on their own.
Not to mention that the sand would make maintenance a nightmare.
I agree with Eve that Prentiss is the best thing the first movie has going for it. Haven’t read the book, but the movie’s a bit obvious in its execution, and the satire is muted for the thriller aspects.
I don’t really believe (like Equipoise does) that this will be a genuinely black comedy. It seems far too jokey in the trailers, and the fact that Frank Oz tends to steamroll his comedies into the broadest conceivable shape means that I suspect there will be little room for subtlety (plus, I’m guessing there will be some cop-out happy ending to boot–at least the original didn’t have that).
Read “A Kiss Before Dying” for a real “sniverlling weakling who makes the wrong choices out of fear and greed.”
A review I read this morning made the amusing point that today it seems kind of pointless to kill women in order to get them to trade real body parts for plastic ones when so many women are willingly paying for the privilege.
“Hey, honey, do you want to go see the new Stepford Wives or stay home and watch Extreme Makeover?”
I read the book recently and one big change that I’ve noticed in the previews for the new movie (I’ve never seen the old) is that all the Stepford wives were apperantly hyper-successful and driven before, well, being replaced by robots, and that Matthew Broderick is mostly jealous of his wife’s success.
I don’t remember everything about the book, but I know that wasn’t the case. In the new movie, Nicole Kidman is a TV executive or something as opposed to a casual freelance photographer. I actually think it takes the creepiness of the story away - in the new movie, her husband has an underlying motive of jealousy for wanting to replace her, in the book, he’s doing it just because it’s convenient.
I think it could be interesting that they’re playing it as a comedy, but I have a feeling it won’t be black enough. I think Faith Hill is some inspired casting, though.
What a great book!
Levin isn’t that prolific, but the sheer skill of his plotting and his super-readable prose put him waay ahead of so many thriller writers. (With the exception of maybe Son of Rosemary. :smack: )
No, all the guys would want multiple copies of Ted’s wife, because she’s hot! 
Sorry to say, advance word has been pretty bad. Director Frank Oz isn’t exactly consistent, and from what I understand Matthew Broderick was a last-minute replacement for the guy they originally wanted (whose casting was the reason Kidman agreed to the film, as she wanted to work with him, but she found herself unable to drop the movie when that original actor left; can’t remember who it was, unfortunately). The production has “train wreck” written all over it. That’s not a guarantee, of course, but the signs are not good.
How can you say that, when I was just about to give you some coffee? (bump)
How can you say that, when I was just about to give you some coffee? (bump)
How can you say that, when I was just abouit to give you some coffee? (bump)
How can you say that…
According to this, her husband was originally to have been played by John Cusack. Now that would’ve been interesting.
Why The Stepford Wives originally needed to be written, capsulized in a single paragraph.
Yes, that’s it, thanks. So say what you will about Kidman as an actor, she’s at least got good taste in who she wants to co-star with.
I happened to come across a copy of the Stepford Wives novel in the English section of the bookstore the other day, and thinking of this thread I browsed through it a bit. From what I read, it seemed that in the novel it’s not made explicit that the women really are being replaced by robots. As the book ends
[spoiler]Joanna seems at least momentarily convinced that Bobbie is still a human woman, and doesn’t demand that she cut herself to prove that she can bleed. Then the men get her. When Ruthanne meets Joanna later she’s been “Stepfordized”, but we don’t see what happens in-between.
So, in the book, are the Stepford women robots for sure, or is the possibility open that something else happened to them? And if they are robots, were the original women replaced with robots or turned into robots by having their brains and bodies tinkered with? In the movie it must have been the former, since Joanna saw her own robot double. In the novel, the men’s behavior at the end and the things they say to Joanna about the difficulties of making a convincing robot replica of a real woman suggest the latter to me. Which is much scarier IMHO, and is actually the ending I thought the movie was going for before Joanna met her double.[/spoiler]
Yes, it does take some of the creepiness away, but I think your point also makes it clear exactly why they’re doing a remake. Sure, the original was very much a product of its times, but so is the new version. As I remember it, the original played on women’s insecurities about the equal rights movement. It’s all told from a woman’s perspective, and the men are pretty much just standard villains – we don’t get a whole lot of insight into their motivations for doing it other than, as you say, because it’s convenient. The movie and book satirized the idea that a woman should know her place and be careful not to overstep her bounds, or else she’ll lose her identity.
The new version plays on men’s insecurities. The trailer has a bit that suggests that it’s not just Kidman’s character who’s a powerful executive; all of the Stepford women are successful businesswomen. Basically, they’ve already won the battle of the sexes and the men have to put them back in their place. It’s a lot less subtle than the original, but it could still be fairly interesting as long as it doesn’t make the men’s club scenes too predictable and trite. I’m hoping that since they cast Christopher Walken, they’re not going to waste him.
I also hope that they include a little bit about the latest insecurity I’m hearing from a lot of my women friends who are married with kids. The ideal that was pushed so much while we were growing up – that of a successful woman with a high-level career and a perfect home life with a family – is actually extremely difficult to keep up. It’s not just men keeping opportunities away from women, it’s that there’s just no time to do everything. I don’t know if that has any place in the new movie, though.
Agreed. If only they could’ve gotten Jessica Simpson as well.
So far, the casting is what’s impressed me the most about this movie – great choices all around, assuming that it’s going more for comedy and less for the satire that was in the original. Nicole Kidman is just perfect as the impossibly beautiful woman who’s also an overachiever because, well, she is. The teaser trailer, which was done like a Lexus or BMW commercial and ended with Kidman in full-on Stepford wardrobe doing a sex-kitten routine, did it for me. She’s perfect. (I wonder if that trailer will end up being better than the movie itself, though.)
Matthew Broderick is much, much better casting than John Cusack – Cusack is more of an everyman, while Broderick seems more like an initially nice guy who could easily be threatened by his wife’s success (and height) that he’d go to extremes to overcompensate.
I’m cautiously optimistic, especially since I found out Frank Oz is directing. He built up so much good will with me by making Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that he hasn’t used it up yet, even with stuff like In and Out.
I haven’t read the thread, but I actually paid attention to one of the commercials yesterday. The Stepford Wives is a comedy? I saw the original when I was very young, and I thought it was a little scary. (On the other hand, it’s the first time I remember seeing titties in a film. Or maybe it was just a guy looking down a woman’s blouse.)
Well, I went to see it last night with a friend from work, and, well, it was a pretty enjoyable film–if you took it as a bit of camp, rather than a suspense thriller or horror movie. It was internally inconsistent, not horribly well written, and a complete waste of Jon Lovitz, but it was still a pretty enjoyable film.
To say the least–like that 15-minute panic ending they re-shot, which completely contradicts several major plot points which have already been established . . .
I like what Andrew Sullivan wrote: