How funny would this be if the genders were reversed?
Men would scream like stuck pigs if a movie glorified the idea that working women should kill their husbands just because they weren't complete doormats. And that seems to be the main objection -- that the wives weren't complete doormats, that they were strong and outspoken, not submissive little girls (the "Jackie Kennedy" version of 1960s female perfection). Women in movies aren't even allowed to kill their husbands when their husbands are physically abusive -- it simply isn't as much "fun" to watch women killing men as it is to watch men killing women.
Just remember, you’re not seeing real women in those movies – you are seeing male-created caricatures of women, designed as horrible harridans in order to give men an excuse for hating women – similar to the caricatures of “rapist black bucks” that white men created to give them an excuse for hating black men. Men create those characters. Men script and direct the actresses. Men caricature women like that in order to justify “killing” them – to justify male abuse of women, to make it "funny" and therefore more acceptable and less morally abhorrent. The acid test is to switch genders and see how "funny" it would play with men in the women's roles. Or switch race & gender and see how funny it would be with black men as the ones who are "put in their place".
Actually, it was movies like this that contributed to bringing about the feminist movement. The real underlying theme of the movie is that women give sex (and cooking and cleaning and childbearing) to get love and security, and men give the illusion of "love" to get sex and service. Research confirmed that marriage was very bad for women and VERY good for men, who held all the aces. In study after study, married men and single women were found to be the happiest, and married women and single men the unhappiest. Think of how cushy marriage is for men even today -- it's the wife's job to create leisure time for her husband so he can be a "little boy" while she remains a "responsible adult". For example, picture groups of married women daring to spend several weeks a year blythely abandoning their families to go on hunting and fishing trips every spring and fall with "the girls", or spending hours away from home playing golf with the girls and playing poker with the girls and drinking at bars with the girls and watching sports, either going to sports events or on TV, with the girls, joining lodges with the girls, going camping with the girls, going to male strip clubs with the girls. Their male authority figure husbands wouldn't "allow" their little servants to behave like free adults, that is -- like men. American men basically live homosexual lives – spending as much time as they can in the company of other men. Married men have a thousand times more freedom in marriage than women have -- women are virtual prisoners of their husbands. Why do you think more married men cheat on their wives than wives do on their husbands? Their wives create all this leisure time for "the boys" to fill any way they choose, since a husband's free time can never be questioned. In America, men are treated like adults but expected to behave like children, and women are treated like children but expected to behave like adults.
Thinking women, even in the 1960s, were not deceived by this male propaganda just because the male media controlled all the messages. The feminist movement finally broke the truism that "life imitates art", and that he who controls the "art" (media) controls the thoughts and actions of women. Women finally stopped accepting the male woman-hating media glop they were fed as "truth".
I guess feminists finally woke up and realized the truth of Thornton Wilder's comment about marriage: "Marriage is a way of tricking a housekeeper into believing that she is a householder."
"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."
- Julius Caesar, act 2 sc 1