gregorwossilus

I saw this movie at the Munich film-festival. Due to the nature of film-festivals I did not know very much about what I was going to see since the info on all the movies shown is very limited. From the first moments on the rapid and rough style of Marshall's picture grabbed me by the throat and held my interest until the end. THIS REVOLUTION has a feel of a modern reality show like the ones we see on MTV. Like it or not this is current and pretty "Zeitgeist"! This should appeal especially to younger audiences. It certainly would be a great thing if younger people watched this film. Marshall has a lot to address and delivers something that regular Hollywood fails to accomplish: He really changes your perspective on things. His film gets you thinking, especially after leaving the theater. Since Marshall wrote, shot, edited and produced the whole thing in the very short period of 100 days I am even more astonished how well it came out. Marshall delivers a clear and classic 3 act structure! That works well of course but Marshall - coming from a documentary background - also succeeds in filling in a lot of documentary like bits and pieces which launch a lot of social background at the viewer. Furthermore everybody gets a good idea of how divided America really is at the moment. If you take nothing at all from this film this still won't escape you. To me as a German this is particularly interesting. OK, the love story sometimes slows the movie down, the main character is not always sympathetic. But considering all the achievements Marshall made in this film and how big the impact of the movie was on me, I consider this minor flaws. This is a modern, controversial, exiting, stylish and very original movie that grows and grows and grows on me after seeing it. And that is certainly a good thing to say about a movie. Go see it. Especially when you don't share the same political view...it could be very inspiring! And if it annoys you...even better! Controversy means movement, and movement means change! For me as a German I can say that I am very happy to see a controversial film like this coming out of America these days. We all can look forward to more feature films from Marshall!

This remake offers a good cast, a promising team and first and foremost a very intriguing plot. Unfortunately the filmmakers could not entirely decide whether to make a sci fi thriller like the movie from the seventies or a comedy. It has a wonderful opening-credit sequence which hails the fifties with their nightmarish perfect-housewife-commercials and groundbreaking kitchen inventions. Then the movie sets his tone introducing Nicole Kidman as a superpopular TV-host (Mr. Kidman was never colder as a character)who bathes herself in the success of her cruel real-time TV shows. After getting fired for basically ruining peoples lives with inhumanly disgusting shows she finds herself in the superclean and somewhat unreal little town of Stepford. While Kidman's character is very well developed, her husband's is not. Matthew Broderick fails to persuade us that he is a true heartbreaker and a great companion for a career-woman such as Kidman. You don't believe that she actually fell in love with him, he is just to weak and boring.The couple just does not seem to belong together, the same problem we found in COLD MOUNTAIN with Kidman and Jude Law. Later we do not want to buy that Broderick's character is turned around by the macho-attitudes of the Stepford-husbands, he is too nice for that.

In the third act the whole thing collapses because the filmmakers do not succeed in turning this comedy into a really frightening thriller. This story is interesting because of the horrible truth being discovered at the end. Instead of leaving us with an open end which would make us moan the characters we fell in love with before (Kidman, Bette Midler) this movie delivers us a poor explanation that takes away the horror - and the horror is the most attractive part of this story in the first place. THE STEPFORD WIVES wants to be a comedy and a thriller, wants to be sarcastic, full of secrets, exiting, a little heart worming and shocking - and is nothing of the above completely. A straight thriller with this cast and crew would have made a great film. OK, I also had some laughs...only to bow my head during the last 15 minutes!