On Saturday my friend and I went to the movies. Through a series of comprises and timing errors we saw "The Women."
Sometimes I grade a movie this way: Boring vs. Not Boring.
"The Women" isn't boring. To me, it was infuriating.
It's an all women cast - no men. It's about four rich, spoiled, self absorbed women played by four fine actors. ("What were they thinking?")
In the beginning I was hoping it would be a "Redemption" movie, my favorite genre. One of the very few positive reviews suggested that it was.
Meg Ryan learns that her rich husband is having an affair with the perfume salesgirl at Saks. She reacts like a spoiled 12 year old, including emotionally abandoning her real 12 year old daughter. Just prior to learning about the affair she learns that her mean father has fired her from her part time designing job because she refuses to design clothes for older women.
Hello? That's what employees do, i.e., what their bosses require! Meg ends up getting herself together at a spa, borrowing money from her mother to start her own clothing line and, in the end letting down her mother and best friend - who got the buyer from Saks to show up and offer to buy her clothing line - by going back home to, what seemed to me to be, the same life she had at the beginning of the movie. But she did get her hair done.
Annette Benning plays a woman who lives for a job that she hates but finally quits but not before betraying her best friend and her value system. ("Annette, what were you thinking when you accepted this role?")
Debra Messing lives in an apartment in New York City with an unseen husband and four small daughters, including a nursing baby. And she's pregnant. Why? Because she and her husband love daughters? No. Because they're trying one more time for a boy. Toward the movie's climax Debra, her feet in stirrups, between her last two contractions before giving birth, tells Meg to give her cheating husband another chance because she, too, had an affair and her husband forgave her. What a multitasker! How did she have the time between the pregnancies?
Jada Pinkett Smith is a lesbian writer who lives an expensive life style after having published only one book. (I'd love to know how that works.) And she dates a really mean model who flunked her anger management class.
She also tries to get her friends, including pregnant Debra, to switch to girls thereby giving our gay bashing friends proof that the gays are trying to recruit us.
OK, what's really bothering me? We're in this terrible economy. People are suffering. Most of the people I hang out with are concerned about others who are worse off and trying to do something to make a difference.
The women in "The Women" are concerned about themselves.
***
Sometimes I grade a movie this way: Boring vs. Not Boring.
"The Women" isn't boring. To me, it was infuriating.
It's an all women cast - no men. It's about four rich, spoiled, self absorbed women played by four fine actors. ("What were they thinking?")
In the beginning I was hoping it would be a "Redemption" movie, my favorite genre. One of the very few positive reviews suggested that it was.
Meg Ryan learns that her rich husband is having an affair with the perfume salesgirl at Saks. She reacts like a spoiled 12 year old, including emotionally abandoning her real 12 year old daughter. Just prior to learning about the affair she learns that her mean father has fired her from her part time designing job because she refuses to design clothes for older women.
Hello? That's what employees do, i.e., what their bosses require! Meg ends up getting herself together at a spa, borrowing money from her mother to start her own clothing line and, in the end letting down her mother and best friend - who got the buyer from Saks to show up and offer to buy her clothing line - by going back home to, what seemed to me to be, the same life she had at the beginning of the movie. But she did get her hair done.
Annette Benning plays a woman who lives for a job that she hates but finally quits but not before betraying her best friend and her value system. ("Annette, what were you thinking when you accepted this role?")
Debra Messing lives in an apartment in New York City with an unseen husband and four small daughters, including a nursing baby. And she's pregnant. Why? Because she and her husband love daughters? No. Because they're trying one more time for a boy. Toward the movie's climax Debra, her feet in stirrups, between her last two contractions before giving birth, tells Meg to give her cheating husband another chance because she, too, had an affair and her husband forgave her. What a multitasker! How did she have the time between the pregnancies?
Jada Pinkett Smith is a lesbian writer who lives an expensive life style after having published only one book. (I'd love to know how that works.) And she dates a really mean model who flunked her anger management class.
She also tries to get her friends, including pregnant Debra, to switch to girls thereby giving our gay bashing friends proof that the gays are trying to recruit us.
OK, what's really bothering me? We're in this terrible economy. People are suffering. Most of the people I hang out with are concerned about others who are worse off and trying to do something to make a difference.
The women in "The Women" are concerned about themselves.
***
