Gurrrl Power Redux

The Stepford Wives is a 2004 remake of the 1975 classic, staring the waxy Nicole Kidman as Joanna Eberhart, a television executive who survives a flashy assassination attempt by a disgruntled reality TV show contestant, only to be fired from her position of power. After a sparky bought of electroshock therapy, Joanna and her husband Walter, played by Matthew Broderick, move the whole family (two nameless, faceless children included) to the picturesque town of Stepford, Connecticut. Johanna stands out as a dry, emaciated and monochromatic career woman (the human equivalent of VIA instant coffee) in a town where all of the other women are shiny, elegant and vacant, (the human equivalent of Jordan almonds). Joanna encounters a friend in the loud and disagreeable misfit writer Bobbie (Bette Midler), as well as an adversary in the magnificent town matriarch, Claire (Glenn Close). Well, eventually, through a series of unlikely occurrences, like a cameo of Faith Hill literally do-si-do-ing into oblivion at a town Square Dance, Johanna realized that the charming women of Stepford are in fact housewife/RealDoll robotic facsimiles of a group of power hungry women who were once CEOs, judges, etc. (keep an eye out for a portrait of Faith Hill in a Hillary Clinton costume during Johanna’s research). And it was none other than their emasculated husbands who forcibly placed them into this state of fabulous limbo. Matthew Broderick has a change of heart just as he is about to oblige Johanna into sublime Stepford submission (it is not made clear how this happens, but there is a hairless, eyeball-less Joanna robot in once scene), and instead simply presses many buttons all at once in the main control room of the Men’s Club. All of the brain microchips go berserk and short out, the Stepford ladies come to their senses, and oh boy, do the husbands have some hell to pay! All in all, this movie didn’t make much sense, but it looked fantastic. For example, we are to accept that there is a woman who dispenses money out of her mouth like an ATM, and to not question how Joanna’s sad and floppy brown administrative hairstyle becomes icy blond and waist length. Apparently, a lot of content had to be edited out for various reasons (including a scene where mutated Bette Midler spreads open her breasts to reveal a frosty cavity for beers) so what was left was this Crazy-Quilt of a film? Perhaps The Stepford Wives would have benefitted from some more decidedly dark content, like all of the wives electrocuting their husbands with a “shocking” kiss goodnight...Written by the Cole Chickering