• The Stepford Wives (2004)

3/30/25 (Sun)

I had thought this was a horror story and was surprised to see Paul Rudnick listed as the writer. I discovered that this was a significantly reconceived remake by Frank Oz done in a more lighthearted tone. A comic approach is not a bad idea in theory given the social satire in the story. Shame about the reality.

Joanna (Nicole Kidman), a high-flying TV executive, is unceremoniously fired when a scandal proves too hot even for the network, causing her to have a mental breakdown. Her husband (Matthew Broderick) feels she needs to get away and moves her and their two children to Stepford, a quiet Connecticut suburb.

It becomes clear that something is off in this town, namely, “All the women around here are perfect sex-kitten bimbos. All the men are drooling nerds.” (Joanna initially sees nothing strange; after all, she says, “I work in television.”) That is, the women are perfect June Cleaver-type housewives who seem to live to serve their husbands – and enjoy it. When Joanna’s only two normal friends, a Jewish writer (Bette Midler) and a flouncy gay architect (Roger Bart), turn into robotically perfect spouses as well, she begins to fear for her own safety.

She discovers that the women have been fitted with microchips controlled by the leader (Christopher Walken) and his wife (Glenn Close). In the end, Joanna distracts the crowd while her husband sneaks into the house and deprograms the chips, freeing all the women from their catatonic states. When the leader attacks the husband, Glenn Close literally knocks his head off with a huge candlestick, revealing him to be a robot. She tells the gaping crowd that she killed him before when she caught him cheating on her, then reworked him as a machine to her specifications and came up with the program to create happy wives. In a Salome-like moment, she picks up the severed head and kisses it, thus electrocuting herself to death. The final scene shows the husbands meekly pushing carts in a supermarket as their revived wives train them to be good spouses.

There’s a good story in there somewhere, but this isn’t it. A lot of the fault is with Rudnick’s lazy script. It’s eminently quotable, but, as always with him, he doesn’t take the time to tie things together logically, doing whatever is needed at the moment to keep the plot going (Jeffrey and In and Out were both guilty of the same). For instance, a wife is presented at one point as a robot spouting cash from her mouth like an ATM while another has her hand resting on a burning stove without noticing, suggesting that the women have been transformed into mechanical creatures. But we learn later that chips were implanted in their brains, which would imply instead that they are humans who have been reprogrammed from within. Toward the end, though, the leader is revealed to be a robot after all. The film needs to make up its mind. I would have thought that a simple brainwashing or hypnotic technique would have been easier to accept in this context and, being at least in the general realm of reality, scarier as well. They suggest as much (Glenn Close, describing her beginnings: “I asked myself, where would people never notice a town full of robots?… Connecticut!”) but still opt for fantasy. This was much more craftily handled in Get Out, where the blacks mysteriously become “whitewashed” with no specific mechanism shown.

The ending was an all-too-typical sentimental Hollywood mess, a real copout (albeit supposedly a replacement for a sharper close due to commercial reasons). The script relies sitcom-like on funny exchanges, which are plentiful (Bette Midler’s book about her mother: “I Love You, But Please Die”; Bart, about a Stepford wife: “She had sparks coming out of her ears. That’s the first sign.” “Of what?” “Cheap jewelry”), but it misses the bigger picture. In the end, the film wants to be satirical but is just too campy to take seriously.

No one in the cast stands out other than a game Bart as the flamboyant gay guy; Glenn Close, especially in her final breakdown; and Walken, a perfect choice for this creepy role. Midler had her moments, but the others were basically going through the motions. A miscast Broderick seemed comatose at times.

The film is harmless fun for the nice one-liners and individual moments. I understand that the original film is more serious, but I’m not interested enough to check. If there’s a future remake, I hope they get a writer who’s not afraid to go all out with the material.