Movie Review: The Stepford Wives

Posted by Arlo on Jun 25, 2004 under Movie Reviews

The Stepford Wives Movie PosterI have to be careful in writing about The Stepford Wives, because if you go in knowing what it’s about, it can be a very predictable movie. This isn’t normally a movie I’d see, especially in a movie theater, but I had a few reasons:

I really like the new theater on the Outer Banks.
The movie was listed in the paper as a Sci-fi/Drama/Comedy.
Mathew Broderick is pretty cool and
Nicole Kidman is pretty hot.

Dang. It’s hard to write about this movie without spoiling anything. Let’s just say that the introduction to Nicole Kidman’s character was too lengthy, characters were completely dropped (the kids), the writers didn’t even make an effort to make the science believable, and the ending felt tacked on. I think I read somewhere that this was a remake of an older movie. Perhaps they were constrained by that.

The best I can say about The Stepford Wives is that it was a “cute” movie.

Trivial Thought: The twist at the end must have been an attempt to alleviate the predictablity of the movie.
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? Christopher Walken is always fun to watch and Mathew Broderick is still pretty cool.
Would I recommend the movie? No.
Will I buy it on DVD? No.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Shrek 2
The Day After Tomorrow
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Van Helsing
The Stepford Wives *

(* Ranking these movies is harder than I thought! I’m going with a “What would I rather see again?” approach. For instance, I’d rather see Van Helsing again than The Stepford Wives, even though The Stepford Wives is a better movie. Same goes for The Chronicles of Riddick and Troy. Obviously this will be an extremely subjective ranking!)