I'm taking revenge for what that bitch did to Parky. The man is a national treasure. I'm a boy and as such like my movies, loud, explody and filled with armies of brain chewing undead cheerleaders. Taking that as a given I think we all know that The Women was never going to be my bag but I was pant-wettingly astounded at just how wide of the mark this piece of sheeeeit actually proved to be. Seriously, I have never seen a film in such desperate need of a good, honest car chase in my frikken' life. The plot: Meg Ryan is a well heeled society lady whose husband does the dirty on her with the not-actually-as-attractive-as-she-first-appears Eva Mendes. Boo! Meg's coven of SITC-lite girlfriends gather around and do the female support network thing for a while, then she goes back to her man. Hooray! It's awful. Below these words you will find the legendary zombie/shark fight scene from Zombie Flesh Eaters, to provide us with some small crumbs of comfort.
As well as being derivative, unfunny and lumpen this movie displays a staggering level of moral cowardice. Meg's cheating low-down rat of a husband fucks off with some strumpet and what do her assorted friends, family and comedy-relief housekeeping staff do? They spend the entire film convincing her to take him back. Not for the sake of the children, mind - Meg should abandon her last shreds of self respect and let the philanderer back into her bed because he, you know, loves her really. That and the fact that there's a formulaic happy ending to shoehorn in, come what fucking may. The message really does seem to be: sod the betrayal, ignore the humiliation and never mind the fact that he's been paying this woman's bills with the fucking family credit card - all that's needed is a cameo from Bette Midler and an impromptu fashion show and everything will be OK! It's bullshit. Here's the bit from Zombie Holocaust where Ian McCulloch kills a zombie with an outboard motor.
Now I'm not daft. I know that a film based on a 1930's Broadway musical isn't going to be plumbing the skanky, jagged depths of human emotion. People like a nice, tidy ending, which is why fairy stories finish on '...and they all lived happily ever after' instead of the more realistic '...and they were all fucking miserable until they died of cancers and brain embolisms'. But here we have a movie that presumably takes great pride in its girl-friendly, feminist credentials - one of the selling points is the all female cast, with not a male face to be seen anywhere in the whole thing - and it resolutely fails to display anything like a spine. Meg folds like origami and the status quo is blithely resumed. I've got to say, the best women I know are stronger than that. Also: it's boring.
In summation: Glyn was walking through Wordsley once and he came across what, for me, is the perfect metaphor for this movie. To whit: a fork sticking out of a human turd. I thank you.
