The Women

1939 sorta-feminist movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: No.

"Those dreadful women."

My my my, these characters really are dreadful, and I'm not sure I wanted to spend over two hours with them. There's a coworker whom I always want to impress by letting her believe I'm more "woke" than I actually am, however. After I mentioned this movie with an all-female cast and female screenwriters, she was excited enough to make me believe that I had to watch it. I'm not sure it's the feminist film from the late-30's that she was imagining in her head unfortunately.

When I listen to podcasts, I listen at 1.5 speed, something that seems to drive my wife nuts. It took a little getting used to. I felt like these characters were all at 1.5 speed, too, and that also took a little getting used to. Once I adjusted to the rhythm, I think I liked this a little more until it started to lose momentum in its second half, but initially, it was a whole lot of women overacting, hammily squeezing the life out of these semi-witty lines. A character says "so-and-so's only trying to be clever," and early on, this really suffers from everybody struggling so hard to be clever--the writers, the characters. It came across as artificial, and I didn't like the characters much at all. Honestly, I'm not sure they really grew on me that much.

There's a technicolor fashion show in the middle of this black-and-white movie that I wasn't sure what to do with, so I just watched it. It involved monkeys, so I'm glad it was there. There's also another annoying child actor (1939 really was a banner year for bad child acting), but it was probably less her fault and more the fault of the filmmakers for requiring too much of her. She really wasn't bad a lot of the time.

My favorite scene was probably a catfight that ended in a bite that must have inspired Tyson in his Holyfield rematch. I'm sure this is the type of movie that Mike Tyson gets high and watches and giggles a high-pitched giggle throughout.

Speaking of cats, there sure are a lot of animal references in this, the kind of thing that I'm sure feminists would appreciate. There are animals linked to the characters in the opening credits, a woman referred to as a "prowler," references to a trip to the zoo, mentions of kennels and claws. A recurring allusion to a nail polish called "Jungle Red" also proves to be significant to the story.