'Stepford Wives' sets a deliciously comic table but blows the main course

Bryan Forbes' 1975 "The Stepford Wives" was a chillingly effective adaptation (by William Goldman) of Ira Levin's novel about a Connecticut suburb where the men have reversed the feminist revolution of the '70s by turning their wives into submissive robots.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE STEPFORD WIVES

DIRECTOR: Frank Oz

CAST: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler

RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, thematic material and language

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, Columbia City Cinema, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace 6, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza 12, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C+

This updated remake has retooled the premise into a vehicle for our current queen of the movies, Nicole Kidman, and -- in the spirit of the "Mummy" remakes, "Starsky and Hutch" and so many other recent retreads -- turned what was originally quite serious into a goofy farce.

In this case, it's not as terrible an idea as it first sounds. The concept was pretty silly in the first place, and could be solid ground for a director as skilled as Frank Oz to poke fun at some of the new millennial turns in the eternal battle of the sexes.

Yet, though it's sprinkled with giddy laughs (going for one-liners instead of any real satiric wit), it's such a flimsy piece of storytelling that it's instantly forgettable, and, while she has her moments, Kidman does not exactly run away with her role.

She plays Joanna Eberhart, a wife, mother and self-obsessed CEO of a television network who is fired from her high-pressure position -- and promptly has a total nervous breakdown -- after one of her reality shows generates a violent incident.

Instead of downsizing and economizing, however, she and her jobless husband (Matthew Broderick) buy what looks like a $3 million mansion and, with no visible means of support, move to the luxurious, gated community of Stepford, Conn.

It's a sort of "Pleasantville" where the women wear aprons around the house and get excited about recipes. Naturally, she doesn't fit in and quickly falls in with a pair of other rebels: the effeminate half of a gay couple (Roger Bart) and a wisecracky author (Bette Midler).

Pretty soon it's clear that all is not what it seems in Stepford, and as her friends, one by one, get their bodies snatched, the movie goes through roughly the same paces as the original, only abbreviated (this "Stepford" is 22 minutes shorter) and played for comedy.

By far the funniest part of the movie is its pre-Stepford opening, which makes fun of television reality and quiz shows; and, after its biggest laugh is generated by a crack about the slowness of AOL, the audience is all set for an evening of imaginative topical humor.

Instead, it gets a standard big-studio Hollywood comedy, with the usual insubstantially motivated shtick, seasoned with the usual vomit and penis jokes. With Chevy Chase instead of Broderick as the husband, this could be "National Lampoon's Stepford Vacation."

Paul Rudnick's script tries to retain a modicum of the original's suspense and to update its concept by having the male villains reacting not against the threat of feminism but its triumph: the indignity of having to live in the shadow of higher-achieving women.

But the film's creepier moments are pathetically weak, and its thematic update fails to attain the minimal credibility that even a wild farce needs to sustain itself: Its assumption that, in their hearts, all men want to return to the sensibility of the '50s simply doesn't play.

For a star of her caliber, Kidman is a very generous actress, and she's content here to sit back and allow many of the movie's more ambitious moments to go to her supporting cast: Bart, Midler and especially Glenn Close as Stepford's maniacal grand dame.

But you almost wish she had been a bit more greedy, because her generosity has resulted less in a balanced ensemble piece than a wacky free-for-all in which her subtle comic gestures and nuances of character have been exuberantly elbowed off the screen.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.