Danny Taggart's Blogarama

A more-or-less daily dose of news, politics, techmology, and any random thoughts that pass through my head.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Review: The Stepford Wives

Movie: The Stepford Wives (2004)
My Rating: Thumbs Down

I contemplated going Thumbs Up on this one because it is somewhat funny and entertaining (plus it's got Nicole Kidman), but ultimately it's just a bad movie. One problem is that the script kept killing the suspense of what was going on by constantly hinting (over and over again) that the wives of Stepford are really robots. It would have been more effective to explore the conformity/brainwashing as human issues first, then have a suspenseful revelation scene where Joanna finds out what's really going on.

There was a huge continuity problem. It was never clear if the wives were robots, or just had chips implanted in their brains. In one scene, one of the wives spits out bills like an ATM, implying she's a robot. But in scenes towards the end, the wives are human, but controlled with microchips.

The dialogue towards the end was pretty shoddy - it's most likely the bad script, rather than the actors. And frankly, the plot twist at the end was stupid and unnecessary.