Though superior cultural artefacts dating from the Great Anti-Feminist backlash of the seventies (am I alone in the universe when I express unwavering fondness for the lovably demented The Baby?) have long since been consigned to the celluloid skip, The Stepford Wives, Bryan Forbes 1975 adaptation of the Ira Levin bestseller, is one of those films that’s never really disappeared from the collective consciousness. Between the constant repeats and TV remakes, the very term has long since entered the lexicon as convenient shorthand for simpering trophy wives, dead-eye Sunday Independent-reading suburbanites and Stand-By-Your-Man losers everywhere. No wonder some producer thought there might be a cash cow lurking.
Hence, this fluffy remake which casts Nicole Kidman as a burnt out TV executive, retreating to a banal, mock-colonial Connecticut town with emasculated, wimpy husband Matthew Broderick (hardly a major career departure) in tow. Little does she know that this gingham-decked place transforms women into domesticated, orgasm-faking fembots. And little do we care, for this Frank Oz (In & Out, Housesitter, The Score) film bears much of the director’s authorial stamp, meaning it’s bland, poorly-crafted and completely lacking in the body-snatching menace that characterised the original. Swapping satire for farce, the 2004 version offers smile-raising antics on a par with Drop Dead Gorgeous or Death Becomes Her, and while it’s eminently watchable, it belongs firmly within a tradition of films that leave Europeans smirking about their own superior sense of irony.
Admittedly, The Stepford Wives is infinitely more competent than the rumoured re-shoots, re-edits and off-screen frictions (just try to imagine the volcanic potential between Mesdames Kidman, Midler and Close – it’s like a bottomless well, isn’t it?) gave us cause to hope, and the diva collectives’ performances enliven the otherwise robotic material. Still, this is far too insubstantial, and the patronising denoument smacks of the Fifties rather than the Seventies – very ‘Ooh, we all know the little lady is the real boss, what with the way she can sneak low-sodium substitute into the salt cellar, and so on’. Reader, it had me kicking the ironing board in protest for days.