Director Susan Seidelman appears to have decided to put her own taste temporarily into a garment bag and to bring out something to appeal to the masses. That would certainly help to account for why the movie is so slavishly attentive to its two oddly matched stars (Meryl Streep, Roseanne Barr), and for why the secondary characters, formerly one of Seidelman's strong suits, are so slighted: not just in the scripting but in the uninspired casting as well. It would also help to explain the depths, or better say breadths, to which the humor so regularly goes (the dropped towel and bared ass, the barfing scene, the phallic symbol for beginners: wronged housewife slicing up a cucumber). We do at least get a few flashes of that invigoratingly cold eye which has sometimes raised suspicions of misogyny -- though never among investigators who notice how impartial that eye is. The concentration on the physical attributes of the Barr character -- the rolls of fat holding off the upward progress of a dress zipper, the M&M-sized mole on her upper lip, the fringe of hair on that same site -- is chilling indeed. And it's much more than would be strictly necessary to "explain" so commonplace a story as a married man dropping his wife and taking up another (thinner) woman. And here is where, at least for a while, Seidelman's coldness plays no favorites. She is scrupulously fair in extending equal mercilessness to the flaws (albeit not physical ones) of the Other Woman: a Danielle Steel-type romance novelist who strives in her daily life to maintain an aura of romance with every breath she takes or talks through ("You see, I try to think only beautiful thoughts ..."). However, the movie loses its comic balance -- on top of its stowed-away taste -- as the jilted wife's revenge scheme gets into gear. No longer an individual specimen of such a type, she now becomes a fantasy banner-carrier for the entire sorority, and along the way becomes a dead earnest (deadly earnest) champion of society's rejects ("All these people needed was a little support and encouragement to turn their lives around"), and a successful career woman, with a successfully removed mole and mustache, into the bargain. You've come a long way, baby! With Ed Begley, Jr. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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