The Women

Piecemeal and earnest to a fault, this remake of George Cukor’s 1939 film relies so much on the elite world of humorless, filthy rich New York women that it excludes most of its would-be target fans. Male audience members will find themselves especially short shrifted by an all-female I’m-so-beautiful movie that doesn’t deign to ever show the masculine source of its narrative engine. Meg Ryan plays Hamptons’ wife/mother Mary Haynes who discovers her never-glimpsed Wall Street husband is having an affair with a Saks Fifth Avenue fragrance counter clerk named Crystal (played by Eva Mendes for all of her va va voom charm). Mary’s loyal, and not so loyal, girlfriends (Annette Bening, Jada Pinket Smith, and Debra Messing) make roulette wheel attempts to help Mary through a marital crisis that never seems genuine. A glorified cameo performance from Bette Midler momentarily kicks the movie into gear before her too swift departure.

(Picturehouse) Rated PG-13. 114 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)