When I was at school, we were always encouraged to preface each of our criticisms of a person or thing with two or three things about that person that were positive. Example: “I really liked your use of mime and dance, and your decision to focus on the physical comedy was interesting, but your performance of ‘Hamlet’ as both a one-woman kabuki show AND a reggae rock opera was perhaps lacking in consistency…..” So: I am schooled in measured politeness. Yet in spite of the above, and try as I might, I can’t find a single redeeming feature about the appalling abortive mess that is The Women.
Normally, I love love love Annette Benning, but she’s reduced to a catty caricature of Samantha from Sex and the City. Jada Pinkett Smith plays a lesbian, which means she’s encouraged to lounge against things a lot. Debra Messing is resumes the role of Grace, but Grace who’s now married and serial-pregnant and still frakkin neurotic. Bette Midler appears – for why, who can say? And poor Meg Ryan; she was very unwise to get her lips done. She’s really an awful actress who’s now completely unwatchable.
The script is dreadful and its appallingly acted. Oh: Candice Bergen’s in it. She’s nice. That’s one positive thing, right? But really, even that nod to good manners drummed in by a £100,000 education exhausts me. So don’t expect me to trawl to find out about locations; I could not give a flying….