Unfortunately, ‘Women’ Don’t Quite Have the Power

I’m really reluctant to give The Women—Diane English’s update of the great George Cukor’s 1939 original (which I haven’t seen but seems to be fairly well-regarded)—a negative review, because I’ve read so much lately about the tortured production history of this project. From what I understand, English—who created and shepherded the seminal comedy series Murphy Brown starring Candice Bergen—has been attached to this project since 1994! She wrote the updated script and ultra-prolific James L. Brooks (who wrote and directed my favorite comedy As Good As It Gets) was set to direct, with Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts set to star. Clearly that didn’t happen. Various actresses came in and out of the project, major studios balked at the idea of an all-female cast (women without men for two hours…can’t possibly sell that!), and now, fourteen years later, English’s film finally hits theaters as an independent production.

It’s a true testament that Diane English and Meg Ryan refused to give up on this project all these years and finally succeeded in bringing their movie to the screen. But sadly, the story behind The Women is far better than the actual film itself. For those that don’t know, the film revolves around Meg Ryan’s Mary Haines, a clothing designer who lives in a really nice house with her really rich husband and eleven-year-old daughter. Mary’s rich husband takes the original step of having a mid-life crisis and starting an affair with Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), a perfume salesgirl who works at Saks Fifth Avenue. Of course Mary finds out and is awakened and eventually empowered. Along for the ride is Mary’s duplicitous best friend: women’s magazine editor Sylvia Fowler, Debra Messing’s frequently pregnant Edie Cohen, and Jada Pinkett Smith’s outspoken lesbian author Alex Fisher.

That’s just a general outline, but it doesn’t seem necessary to detail more of the film’s plot, because plot points are not the issue here. The fundamental problem of The Women is that it doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be. It tries to pay homage of sorts to classic feminist treatises like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening while also being 21st-century relevant. It tries to weave poignancy and real emotional hardship with broad humor and slapstick and jabs at gossip and glamor. The whole effort feels forced and all over the place. It’s a terribly uneven affair, and I think that probably stems from the film’s laborious production history. The film took so long to make, the script and casting went through so many stages that any sense of thematic and tonal clarity slowly dissipated. The film tries to get too far on the energy of the cast, but the final product just doesn’t gel.

It’s really a shame, because the potential for a really entertaining and fulfilling story that celebrates women clearly existed. There’s a lot of great talent at work here. I’ve been impressed by Annette Bening over the years (she’s great in Kevin Costner’s seriously underappreciated 2003 effort Open Range), and I thought Eva Mendes was surprisingly strong in last year’s We Own The Night. And Meg Ryan, let me just say that she still has the goods in spades. She still looks great, and she’s still charismatic and fun to watch. It’s easy to see why everyone fell in love with her almost twenty years ago, and I have no doubt that she has plenty of great performances left in her…assuming Hollywood miraculously provides her with a worthy project.