The Women: Critic Reviews

The Women is such an arduous patchwork of 'issues' it ends up a Frankenstein's monster of a chick flick.

It hurts especially to watch Ms. Bening and Candice Bergen (who plays Mary's mother) lend their wit and dignity to a project that has so little of its own.

Though aspects of the 1939 comedy seem silly and shrill now, they were at least consistently entertaining. Where the original was deliciously loopy and melodramatic fun, this one is watered-down, sappy and earnest.

In the end, English just wants to make a nice chick flick with some sassy lines. Genuine nastiness has been eliminated, while not-very-funny banter is retained.

The movie is a work of ambivalence. Is English making fun of these women? Or is she making a pilot for Lifetime? It's hard to tell.

Is it an exaggeration to call The Women the worst movie of the year? Well, yeah, probably. But it may be the most disappointing, given all the effort that went into it.

Fourteen years in the making, The Women marks a serviceable directorial debut for English.

In spite of the casting and honorable revamps, it feels more dated than the 1939 original did for its time period.

The funniest thing about The Women is that Mick Jagger is one of the producers. There was a knowing laugh in the theatre as his name sprang up in the opening credits -- our last chance to laugh, as it turned out, for the next two hours.

What a pleasure this movie is, showcasing actresses I've admired for a long time, all at the top of their form.

'What do you think this is, some kind of 1930s movie?' Mary bellows at her mother at one point. If only it were.

Ryan, barely refining her When Harry Met Sally persona, is a dud.

In writing this I feel like a hung jury. My final verdict on The Women: Enjoyed, not overjoyed.

Despite its proud legacy and promising cast, The Women is a miscarriage of comedy.

Hopefully that audience won't be fooled by this cast's potential and the clever concept; the final product here is anything but fabulous.

The Women isn't terrible. There's too much talent here for that, even if it's displayed unevenly. But it's something that might be even worse: unnecessary, at least as long as you can rent the original.

As much as I enjoy current actresses like Ms. Bening and Ms. Ryan even in a lost cause, I cannot recommend the latest reenactment of The Women as anything special.

English struggles trying to create the kind of feel-good experience that seems to come so naturally to femme helmers like Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron.

A total disaster.

It's a movie of one-shots, with the ladies staying in their flattering light, delivering their lines to someone who reacts to that clever line in the next one-shot.

What was then snappy dialogue from meowing madams acting out a morality play on everything that stinks about haute society now flaccidly flaps, lost in translation from old world to new.

Of all the freedoms that women have rightly earned, aping the worst of male behaviour needn't rank high among them.

You go, girls. Preferably as far away as possible.

English has shown herself to be an adept, perceptive, and at times funny writer, but too little of that is on display here.

These women are ready for action, but the fur never flies.