I wasn't alive in 1939. I don't see any reason to compare this movie to an 70+ year old movie. Some of these actors are our greatest living actors. They are as capable as the original actors were. Get a life. Judge this on its own merits.
"Judge this on its own merits."
It is highly indicative that your post did not mention what those so-called merits are. All you talk about is the actresses. The fact is that even the best performers sometimes make poor choices when it comes to scripts. Oh, you also mention that you weren't alive in 1939, as if that had any bearing on the discussion.
In short stxflyer, the only idiot here seems to be you.
Judge the movie on it's own merits would imply that everyone ignore the first movie entirely.
The movie is ok on those points but I don't think that it would be 'remade' in the future.
I watched it because of the first movie. I like the movie but really...when you transfer a story from one generation to the next it doesn't necessarily work.
I wasn't alive in 1939.
I don't see any reason to compare this movie to an 70+ year old movie
Some of these actors are our greatest living actors.
I haven't seen the original but I would have probably still enjoyed this one just the same ~ it was fun and held my interest, which isn't easy since I enjoy TV crime dramas much more than movies these days
Wasn't it a bit creepy to have never seen Steve though?
I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. I was disappointed because I really wanted it to be great. Oddly Meg Ryan was the weak link in this movie. She was still trying to do her "thing"....and she's just gotten too old by this movie for that to still work. She's a good actress and doesn't need those affectations anymore. However, it is a movie about a group of friends with actresses that I like, so I bought the DVD and will watch it from time to time because I like watching these women....not because it's a great movie. On the flip side.....there are (seeminly)great movies that I have seen only once and will probably never see again. Also, they should have made more of this type of female driven movie while they had the chance. Since Briesmaids....this tame stuff doesn't have a chance anymore.
shareI have seen the original, and while I liked it, I like this one too. I don't see why people are so judgmental, OKAY so JPS's role was kind of lame and over-acted, but I liked everyone else in the movie and I enjoyed the story. It was nice to see a modern twist on it, the original is over 70 years old, and while it was beautifully done, I like seeing an updated version of it :)
shareAnd don't forget Joan Collins who was in the not so good second remake of THE WOMEN (THE OPPOSITE SEX) add also in the B movie EMPIRE OF THE ANTS...
shareI am watching this for the second time and enjoying it. And I really don't understand why people are knocking Meg Ryan's acting. SHe's damn good, as are all of the others. The plot is intriguing and the dialogue fun. The original was a play written by Clare Booth Luce and had an all female cast. That explainsd why we don't see Steven.
We need to just enjoy and not compare.
Exactly lgander! I just watched it again (also saw it when it first came out). Actually liked it better the first time. Its a different movie than the original, and I thought the acting was uniformly quite good. Fun romantic comedy.
shareI had a hard time not comparing this to the 1930's version too. The best scenes in this remake (to me) were when the women bonded. I didn't get a clear feeling of that in the earlier version.
The trauma is the same though. How is it that a women doesn't know that a house was dropped on her? And as I heard in another movie-When a man shows his true colors, a women must decide to go or no go. In both movies, the women stayed with their man. In the remake, I saw the wounded woman grow, accepting some responsibility. But the comedy seemed forced in the remake. So a bad script or bad delivery?
I liked the original far better than this remake. The girl power dynamic was better.
Buffy...what's your damage?
But it sucks, even on its own merits. Meg Ryan looked scary. I saw this version before the 1939 movie. When I finally saw that one, and realized what the 2008 version had been going for, I realized that the remake sucked even more than I'd originally thought. Diane English is no Anita Loos.
shareAnd they just tossed out the one of the GREATEST film lines of all time like a piece of thrown out garbage...it was originally Crystal's (Joan Crawford) line at the end of the play. "There's a name for women like you, but it isn't used in polite society...outside of a kennel." This movie threw it out at the beginning of the movie credits, during the city dog walking scene...to someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the plot.
Whatever collective brain who banded together to write this screenplay should be tossed out of Hollywood on their collective ears.
"A man's kiss is his signature" -- Mae West
The 2008 remake doesn't just get bad reviews in comparison to the 1939 original, but on its own terms (although fans of the original are going to make the inevitable comparisons).
It's difficult to do this kind of material in a post-feministic/post-PC era, and the 2008 version proves it... I guess it could be done well in the modern era, but it would be harder.
Also, the casting is an issue. In 1939, the women from THE WOMEN were cast for their acting chops -- or at least their diva acting chops.
In the 1956 remake, THE OPPOSITE SEX, the women were cast for their looks -- or whatever qualified at the time (as only Joan Collins was really pretty, and none of them could do the diva thing very well, nor was it asked of them in a smugly paternalistic '50s context).
And in 2008, what the industry sees as "quirky" or "strong" or "independent" celebrity actresses is specific to the present era: they're not divas (although Midler can obviously do "diva"), they're not particularly powerful actresses, they're reasonably attractive but not particularly pretty, they can kind of do comedy, etc... But they certainly seem like they could have their own personal food/couture/helicopter-parent websites if they wanted one.
All these movies are reflections of their era in terms of how movies are made, their tone, and who executives think to cast. So it's understandable that younger viewers in particular might not "get" why the 2008 version seems too anemic because it compares similarly to how films are made and cast today (for better or for worse) and therefore assume the bad reviews are coming from geriatric "idiots" living in the past.
That's probably an unavoidable viewpoint.
But the low rating for the 2008 version is not just coming from people who know or love the original.
The 1939 film as about bitchy women being bitchy to each other. The 1956 film as a about coquettish women being desirable to men as per '50s sexism. The 2008 film is about famous women you've seen on magazine covers being competitive but not really because we don't want to reward misogyny too much by completely following through on the original source material.
Which one is still going to work when looked at after a few years?
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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA