The Women is a chick flick worth missing

By Jackie Ammons     9/25/08 7:00pm

Imagine a hybrid film that combines the metropolitan feel of The Devil Wears Prada, the sappy sweetness about four friends of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and the high drama of "Gossip Girl." All great to watch separately, these elements absolutely fail when combined into one movie like the newly-released The Women, based on the 1936 play by Clare Boothe Luce.A chick flick without a directed plot line and a drama without enough ethos to make the viewer feel for the characters, The Women is a disappointment.

The story follows four friends: the perfect designer-wife-mother-volunteer Mary (In the Land of Women's Meg Ryan), the successful fashion magazine editor Sylvi (Running with Scissors' Annette Bening), the free-spirited, perpetual-mother Edie (Lucky You's Debra Messing) and headstrong writer Alex (Reign Over Me's Jada Pinkett Smith). As in any other sappy girlfriends movie, the women help each other out through times of need, like when Mary's husband has an affair with the Saks Fifth Avenue spritzer girl (We Own the Night's Eva Mendes), when Sylvia loses her dream job, when Edie goes into labor with her fifth baby and when Alex has troubles with her supermodel girlfriend.

Even while this movie acts as a fun and flighty Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for middle-aged women, it seems rather pointless and formulaic. It contains all of the scenes one would expect from a chick flick dramedy: the crying scene when the friends make up, the runway scene when all of the women "ooh" and "ahh" over the fashions and the pillow-fight-in-your-lingerie scene when the wife confronts the "other woman." While fun for a while, these scenes become rather boring due to their overuse and detract from any sort of logical plot progression that the film might produce otherwise.

---

---

Nevertheless, The Women certainly stays true to its title and to the play on which it was based, for there are literally no men in the movie - no husbands, no boyfriends, no little boys, not even insignificant extras walking down the street, just a tiny baby boy born in the end of the film amidst his mother Edie's blood curdling screams. This decision was a mistake. Women go to chick flicks not only to enjoy the optimistic, flirty narratives but also to see some of Hollywood's male stars, such as George Clooney (Ocean's Eleven), Matthew McConaughey (Tropic Thunder) and James Marsden (27 Dresses). A chick flick without men is like The Bourne Identity without guns and blood. Something essential is missing.

Though The Women is lacking in male counterparts, it manages to keep its one-star rating by boasting a fabulous female cast. As one would expect, Ryan, Bening, Messing, Smith, Bergen and Mendes perform fabulously. Ryan retains her irresistible sweetness from You've Got Mail, Bergen carries her tough "Murphy Brown" role into this film quite well and Mendes is just Mendes: simply sexy. Even though the actresses do well in each of their roles, they seem only to be playing continuations of previous roles rather than adopting new challenges that bring out other facets of their acting skills.

Unless you're dying for an extra shot of estrogen for the day, you shouldn't see The Women. There are plenty of other chick flicks that have actual storylines, some sweet moments without the sappiness and maybe even a couple of cute Hollywood men in them.

---