'The Women'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

September 12, 2008

PLOT A wealthy woman whose husband is dallying with a salesgirl tries to find inner strength. (PG-13)

CAST Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith

LENGTH 1:54

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE An ensemble this good guarantees some lively moments, but the film's outdated message seems more empowering for men.

The 1939 version of "The Women," a high-society satire based on Clare Boothe Luce's play, still offers plenty to enjoy. Namely, several towering screen sirens wearing freakazoid couture and creating crackling comedy without a single male castmate. That's OK as long as you overlook the outdated message, which is that all the spa treatments in the world aren't worth a fig without a man, even if he is cheating on you. Look, it was nearly 70 years ago.

The new version of "The Women" has no such excuse. It's updated in all the obligatory ways - cell phones trill, career women struggle and Jada Pinkett Smith plays a token lesbian - but the message hasn't changed. "The Women" wants to have it all, paying lip service to empowerment while still promulgating a depressingly male-focused romantic ideal.

Luce's razor-sharp characters are softened into chick-flick cliches by writer-director Diane English, whose tenure with "Murphy Brown" might have promised better things. The story remains the same: Mary Haines (Meg Ryan, replacing Norma Shearer) is a wealthy doormat of a wife whose husband is sleeping with a gold-digging salesgirl (Eva Mendes, enjoyably filling Joan Crawford's heels). As Mary embarks on a journey of self-discovery, she'll find help (and hindrance) in her friends, magazine editor Sylvie Fowler (Annette Bening, vulnerable but less fun than the flinty Rosalind Russell) and the blissfully domestic Edie Cohen (Debra Messing). Candice Bergen outclasses everyone as Mary's mother, who advises her daughter to simply forgive and forget.

Any wisdom in Luce's material is undermined by a litany of stereotypes: Mary's mother undergoes plastic surgery; Mary's personal reinvention includes a perm; the shopaholic Sylvia sports sci-fi sunglasses that can spot fake handbags. For all the modernization, "The Women" seems more retrograde than the original. It even breaks the no-males rule, bringing one in at the last minute.