The weirdest element of the film, though, isn't its fevered pitch. It's that these smart, successful, got-your-back best pals don't even notice they're living in a dystopian nightmare where men are invisible. There are no males eating in the restaurants, attending business meetings or even walking the streets of Manhattan. Yet these invisible creatures still wield frightening power. Husbands, like Mary's, lie and cheat -- or, like Edie's, simply move out of the apartment to get a break from the kids. Bosses and fathers loom large, ready to cut the ladies loose for failing to meet their expectations. Men are at once irrelevant and omniscient, and I'm not sure which gender that insults more.

Did you see the original movie? Know anything about it? The whole absence of men thing is sort of the point. In fact, the original was filmed without any men on set. Quite a feat, even for today.

The header pic makes Annette look like her face got stretched over a barrel of Botox. I hope that's just an unflattering job in the makeup trailer. She was hot in American Beauty. I hope she didn't ruin what God gave her.

I've seen the ads and from them concluded that I will probably see the movie, but on DVD at some point. I think its a challenging story to update - the characters are so oversized, nad in a vernacular thats not used in movies now. It seems that women now have to be hot at all stages of life, hot young lady, hot mother, hot middle aged woman, hot grandma. No more broads, battle axes, dowagers.

I think the original story would be considered un PC, but I still think it applies for some. Can a woman still love and want to be married to a man that has dalliances? The statistics would say yes.

There is no way that this movie will ever live up to the classic version of The Women which turns up on Turner Classic Movies. It was a hoot and made perfect sense of no males visible.

I'm sure this will be too earnest to watch. Not even on DVD will I bother. I'll just put on my black and white version and have yet another laugh.

is no joan crawford, and Meg Ryan no Norma Shearer. Why do all women these days regardless of their ages look like not quite girls but--? At least the girsl in Sex and the City seem to take their lives seriously. I saw the trailer for this at Mama Mia which was silly but fun, this looks silly but not a whole lot of fun. I liked the old one, again silly and fun. Especially where that girl can't spend any of her own money because her husband is insecure so she leaves him only to find out she's pregnant and head back to him, weirdly funny.

The one with fashion scene in color or the one w/ the entire scene removed. I have both.

ESQUIRE could get at least a year's worth of "Hell's Multiplexes" out of these movies. They could start off with THE HULKs, BEWITCHED, THE STEPFORD WIVES, and GET CARTER...:P

Yeah, Bening is the one who really looks strangely stiff-faced and unlike herself.

It sounds like Williams knows the original, and The Women is probably known even among people who haven't seen it as the movie with the all-female cast. The point Williams is making, if I read her right, is the bizarre and essentially pointless quality of this remake. In 1939 women still inhabited a seperate space. It was a world of luncheons at home, beauty shops, and sometimes boarding houses in Reno. There were certain places where only women would be expected, like fashion shows, and it's no mistake that so much of the original movie takes place in various bedrooms, dressing rooms and "ladies' lounges" as I believe the bathroom was referred to in polite society. The servants appeared in the space most traditionally resevered for the female sex: the kitchen. The entire movie took occurred in places men didn't go.

The original movie didn't even have the women in public places very often, other than the women's sections of department stores and a train bound for Reno. The stage show went farther in marking the seperation: Mary not only had a daughter, she had a son, but he didn't rush into mamma's boudoir when her friends were present as his sister would. He didn't want to hang out with girls, though he taunted his sister offstage. I suspect MGM deleted the character because to never show a mother in contact with her son would have offened Louis B. Mayer's sentimental nature (the sentiment of a barracuda; "he wept steel tears," as Judy Garland said).

Yet the point was clear: right outside that space were all the men, occupying the man's world. The final shot is that of Mary, her husband regained, rushing back to that very world.

Since nowadays women own as much of the public space as men, and they don't hang out having cocktails at home with friends while hubby is away, but work in the so-called men's world of offices, board meetings and power lunches, the work's essential conciept makes no sense, and the result is a science fiction universe: it's not that the women are only being seen in the places women gather, it's that every place on earth has been wiped clean free of men.

The original made clever use of a separate "womens' world." The remake is apparently not clever in any way. I love the original movie, but I can't think of another less appropriate for a remake. Well, maybe The Birth of a Nation

I've become wary of reviewers who trash "women's movies" nowadays.

"Sex and the City" and, especially, "Mamma Mia" received vicious reviews, and yet I loved both of them. In fact, I kept/keep going back to see them, because they're joyous and funny, warm toward women but never cloying. They're about reconciliation and loyalty, as well as fun (and in "Mamma Mia," glorious music).

I liked the original "The Women" as a portrayal of the catty wives women had to be at the time. I think it's cleverly written.

I haven't seen this one, and am wondering whether Williams is a woman's-movie trasher or a sensible critic. Guess I'll have to go see the movie to answer my own question.