Feminine Intuition

Quite a few months back, I wrote a rather cheesed-off post about the remake of George Cukor's The Women (1939), in which I basically condemned the new movie and called it a bitch slap to the face of the original. This was perhaps a premature judgment, but come on, going off of that cloying, condescending initial poster and what I believed then was uninspired casting (or, at least, my difficulty imagining these contemporary actresses trying to fill those stylish classic shoes), can you really blame me? But, I can admit when I'm wrong, and I think I was wrong about The Women, version 2008. This is very much a foot-in-mouth moment for me. Granted, the movie could still turn out to be a complete disaster, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt (it's a new thing I'm trying these days).

The trailer is what converted me:


It was after viewing this the first time that I said to myself, "Hey, this actually doesn't look totally repugnant." And believe me - that, at the time, was the highest compliment that I could possibly give it.

Eva Mendes looks delicious, Annette Bening could very well do Rosalind Russell justice, and Meg Ryan already looks a hundred times better than whiny, doe-eyed, nobody-can-really-be-that-earnest Norma Shearer. I also dig the racial diversity, something that wasn't exactly peachy keen in 1939.

They've also wisely adopted a new poster. They went from this gag-inducer...

...to this fun and much more tolerable model:

So, here's to the original film, to the memory of the glorious George Cukor, to Roz and Joan (Crawford, not Fontaine), to a new generation of women, and to the possibility of some intelligent feminist satire in the seriously-lacking present day.

I'm on board now, ladies. Don't make me regret it.