‘The Women’: Remake of ‘39 comedy defeated by staleness

Published 11:00 am Thursday, September 11, 2008

Almost the first thing we hear in “The Women” is a joke written many decades ago, about a word for a certain kind of woman, a word rarely “used in high society … outside of a kennel.”

The line undoubtedly got some laughs in 1939, when the first movie version of “The Women” was released. And it’s nice that Diane English, the writer-director of the new adaptation, chose to keep a few of that film’s one-liners.

But the line itself doesn’t scan, because it’s not true. The five-letter slang for a female dog is a common usage now, even — especially? — in high society.

This points up a problems with this new, long-in-development take on “The Women.” Its plot feels like something from another era, even if the approach tries hard to incorporate a “Sex and the City” vibe.

The distinguishing feature of every incarnation of “The Women” (it began as a hit play by Clare Boothe Luce) is the exclusion of male characters, even as extras. This holds true in the new movie, too, with one exception.

Good girl Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) has wealth, a famous husband and a daughter. What she lacks is knowledge that her husband is cheating — information learned by her best friend, Sylvia (Annette Bening), from a too-talkative manicurist (Debi Mazar).

Sylvia blabs the news to her pregnant sister (Debra Messing, from “Will &Grace”) and another friend (Jada Pinkett Smith), who gnaw on the gossip and worry about whether to tell Mary.

We also will meet the femme fatale dallying with Mary’s husband, a perfume salesperson named Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), who remains unapologetic even after being confronted about it.

The cast also includes Cloris Leachman, who has some funny moments as a maid, Carrie Fisher and Bette Midler, in an extended cameo that seems to have little reason for existing.

There’s a funny six-degrees-of-separation thing happening, too: Diane English was the mastermind behind “Murphy Brown,” and her star, Candice Bergen, has a nice role here, as Meg Ryan’s mother. Bergen also played Ryan’s mother in the 1981 film “Rich and Famous,” which was the last movie directed by Hollywood legend George Cukor, who made … the 1939 version of “The Women.”

I think this movie leans too heavily on the kind of fabulous-shoes aesthetic of many of Hollywood’s recent women-oriented movies, and Ryan is bland in the central role. The role as written is a dishrag anyway, and this is yet another example of an incredibly wealthy character who never once reflects on just how stinkin’ rich she is.

Annette Bening has the best role, and this splendid actress does fine by it. Messing has a few funny line readings, but most of the other women are disappointingly peripheral.

There are quite a few good zingers, and that might be enough to put the film over with its target audience. When Candice Bergen remarks that a face-lifted woman looks “like she’s re-entering the earth’s atmosphere,” it makes up for 15 minutes of blandness.