I wouldn’t trust Sullivan’s judgement at all whenever he might have a chance to bash Sontag. He’d call the Mona Lisa crap no matter what if he could get in a dig at her.
That said, the movie is probably crap from what I hear. Personally, I can’t get at all excited about replacing them with robots as opposed to turning them into robots. Just not as creepy or as good for satire.
You’re misunderstanding what Sullivan wrote. Here he’s agreeing with Sontag and is using her as an authority.
Weren’t they replaced with robots in the original film? This doesn’t seem to be the case in the book (although I’m unclear on that point, and no one’s replied to my earlier post on the subject), but in the older movie Joanna saw her replacement robot.
About whether or not the women were turned into robots in the new film:
During most of the film, all signs point to the woman being replaced by robots: remote controls can affect physical characteristics of the women, one woman sparks when she breaks, one woman acts as an ATM (through her mouth), and, most importantly, joanna sees her robot double. But at the very end they pull a clumsy plot switcheroo; it turns out that the women were all merely modified. The chips in their brains are dissolved and they’re apparently back to normal.
I’ve seen neither the original film nor read the book. It’s just that total replacement + murder rings too false for me to be really effective.
<digression>
Moody Bastard and Annie-Xmas, THANK YOU for the discussion about A Kiss Before Dying. Just read it tonight - what a terrific book!
</digression>
Wait, so does that mean that the women aren’t “Stepfordized” anymore and they go back to being who they were?
I remember seeing one of those sequels, “Stepford Kids” where they did BOTH-they made robot replacements for the kids, while the REAL kids would be taken to this center where they would receive some kind of bio-engineering so that they’d change permanently. (Yes, it was very stupid).
OKay, never mind, I looked it up on moviespoilers.com
Sounds interesting, to say the least.