Word: buzzes
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MOVIES: Are The Stepford Wives and The Terminal as bad as the buzz...
...buzz has recently hit the summer's big grownup drama, Steven Spielberg's The Terminal, and the big grownup comedy, The Stepford Wives. Stepford endured lots of rewriting, reshooting and trimming to a terse 93 min. In other words, the film--a remake of the 1975 thriller about "perfect" suburban women who turn out to be robots--underwent the same radical makeover, the same behavioral modification, as the wives of Stepford. And with the same goal: to make it prettier and more pleasing. As for the Spielberg film, in early June the Internet cinephile site Ain't It Cool News...
...surprise about The Terminal is not that it got bad buzz but that it's a bad film. Several bad films, actually. First it's a comedy of desperation, with lots of sight gags (a machine that spits quarters in Viktor's face, too many people slipping on a wet floor) in the style of French comic actor-director Jacques Tati. Then it's a love story, as Viktor romances a flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Finally the uplifting and heart tugging kick in. The Terminal is Spielberg's shortest feature since the first Jurassic Park, yet it drags, plods...
...case of Buzz v. Stepford, yes, the movie is a little messy. But that's forgivable, since it has a wonderfully wounding malice directed at both the Stepford, Conn., contingent of Energizer Bunny wives and the New Yorkers who have just moved in. Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman), a just-fired network boss, wears black to the town's July 4 picnic. "Only high-powered castrating Manhattan bitches wear black," she is told. "Is that what you wanted to be?" Her demure reply: "Ever since I was a little girl...
...time you read this, The Stepford Wives may have been deemed a box-office failure. But that shouldn't matter to people who want a film full of smart laughs. Maybe big giggles can drown out bad buzz...