Amaris Alarcon
Almost 70 years in the remaking, “The Women”, by writer-director Diane English, falls short compared to the original 1939 release by George Cukor.
This new version of the film has a string of well-experienced actresses but “The Women” still lack the solid poise and excitement the original cast had.
The only thing that was significantly the same as the original “Women” was that there where no male appearances.
Males were certainly referenced too, but were only seen in “The Women” hearsay perspective.
The film starts off with Silvie Fowler (Annette Bening), discovering that her best friend, Mary Haines’ (Meg Ryan) husband is cheating on her with the Saks Fifth Avenue “spritzer girl,” Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes).
Confused if she should tell Mary or not, Silvie leads the movie into a series of senseless events.
The film describes Mary Haines as the type of woman that does it all and can easily confide in her friends Silvie, Edie Cohen (Debra Messing) and Alex Fisher (Jada Pinkett Smith).
While getting a manicure at the gossip-seeking Saks, Mary finally finds out about her husband’s infidelity.
Her socialite life is abruptly turned upside down.
Mary goes back to her seemingly perfect life as if nothing has happened.
For a movie that’s an hour and 54 minutes long, it’s slow steady pace lacks the strong feminine points of view from the original film.
This dawdling pace overshadowed through the whole movie making it mind-numbing to watch.
The original “Women” was about the clever ways women plot revenge against each other.
Instead this film focused on women’s relationships with each other and their dependency on men.
So even though the men in the movie aren’t seen, they still find a way to cast an enormous shadow over ‘The Women’.
This film proves that sometimes some movie masterpieces are better left as classics rather than being remade into the derivative Hollywood movies of today.
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