The WomenDiane English(Picture House Entertainment)2.5 Stars Men, be afraid, be very afraid.The Women, written, produced and directed by Diane English, starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith, is a three hour, completely female-dominated film littered with estrogen and man bashing in every scene. Mary Haines, played by Meg Ryan, is a retired fashion designer living in a Connecticut mansion with her husband, one daughter, a maid and a nanny. Haines and her friends Sylvie, Edie, and Alex, sip cosmos, and wear fabulous clothes as they strut around New York City trying so desperately to copy “Sex and the City.” Haines’s life comes to a standstill when she finds out that her husband is cheating on her with the much younger, and much more interesting to watch, Crystal, played by Eva Mendes. The majority of the movie revolves around Haines wallowing in self pity as she attempts to get her life back on track by eating sticks of butter dipped in coco powder, lingering around her mansion all day in her bathrobe and paying absolutely no attention to her teenage daughter who is understandably upset over her parent’s divorce. Meanwhile the worst – or best – thing about this movie is Pinkett Smith, who plays the angry, man-hating, lesbian Alex, whose one-liners were laughable not because of the clever or hilarious wordplay, but because of the horrible, over-exaggerated manner in which Smith delivers them.Bening is next in the gaggle of girls as Sylvie, who is so obsessed with her career as a magazine editor and looking fabulous, that she has no time for a man or a friendship that is not surface level. “The Women” is supposed to be about a band of friends uniting over the injustices that men bring upon them, strengthening their everlasting bond of sisterhood while looking incredibly chic. Unfortunately, it was difficult believing that any of the these women could even remotely be friends, let alone stand to be around each other for more than three hours. If the casting and development of the characters wasn’t bad enough, the director and location scout for this film went to even further lengths to insult my intelligence by shooting a relatively long scene on Newbury Street in Boston, and trying to pass it off as Manhattan.Trying to be a hundred things at once, with cameos from Bette Midler, Carrie Fisher and Candice Bergen, this movie accomplishes very little except to terrify women of being a woman of a certain age living in “New York City” with a bunch of friends who care about nothing but themselves and getting monthly treatments of botox.
