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The Stepford Wives is a 2004 comedy/science fiction film based on the Ira Levin novel The Stepford Wives. It was released in North America on June 11, 2004.
Description
This film, directed by Frank Oz with a screenplay by Paul Rudnick, stars Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Faith Hill, Glenn Close and Jon Lovitz.
This film is a departure from other versions of The Stepford Wives in that it is a comedy and its feminist themes, if any, are muted. The only real moral to be gleaned from this film is perhaps that both gynocratic superfeminism and old-fashioned male chauvanism are inappropriate extremes.
The majority of the film was shot in Darien, Connecticut and New Canaan, Connecticut.
Plot
In the 2004 film, the town's women were formerly successful and powerful figures in their industries - scientists, politicians, television moguls - and their husbands, feeling inferior and threatened, brought them to Stepford to have brain chips implanted to make them docile, subservient, and good at sex. In a departure from the original film, one of the couples who moved to Stepford is gay; a man wants his partner to become less flamboyant.
The film is reported to have done very poorly in test screenings and to have required significant editing and additional filming before its general release. Some elements of the film hint at what the edits might have been: for most of the film, the wives are depicted as robots; sparking when they malfunction, spitting money from their mouths, and being able to place their hands on hot stoves, and the heroine is frightened by what appears to be a lifeless android version of herself. It's only at the film's climax that it is revealed the women are controlled by microchips and that this control can be reversed.
Tagline: The wives of Stepford have a secret.
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