After this movie was over, my initial reaction was to call it “brilliant”. My companions disagreed, citing trite themes, stilted dialogue, and a tepid finish. I responded, “Well, you have to have seen the original to really appreciate the remake.” My husband, ever the empiricist, noted as follows: “Let me ask you, if its brilliance is contingent upon having seen the original…” I didn’t hear the end of his sentence because I had already stomped off to the kitchen in a huff, but you get the idea.
Still, I stand by my appreciation for taking an ironic horror film and making it into a doubly ironic comedy. In this version, if you don’t feel sorry for the men, at least there’s some empathy as to why they might go to such lengths to repair years of emasculation…Until you learn that the whole thing is really a plot devised by a high-powered woman who herself suffered a nervous breakdown. At that point, I think the metaphor, and the movie, lose steam, but then there’s only few more minutes to go.
I will agree with my husband that the writing was a bit cheezy, at times to the point of being unbearable (When one of the men responsible for the womens’ “transformation” metions that he gained his expertise from working at AOL, Nicole Kidman quips, “Is that why they’re so slow?” Ugh!)
Still, fun, funny, and some light refreshment for thought. Oh, and after I figured out that Nicole Kidman was not, in fact, Annette Bening with a facelift (don’t ask…), I appreciated her acting all the more.
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