Revisited: The First Wives Club
Cameron Diaz's new film, The Other Woman, is just a lame imitation of this 1996 classic.
Let’s get this out of the way: I have not seen the new Cameron Diaz-Leslie Mann-Kate Upton film, The Other Woman. I will. I don’t look forward to it, but I will. Not even that ghastly emoji marketing campaign can change that. Why? Because the moment I found out about this movie — a comedy featuring three jilted lovers exacting revenge on the man who did them wrong — it instantly reminded me of Hugh Wilson’s 1996 film, The First Wives Club. And, let’s face it, The First Wives Club is amazing.
What’s not to love about the story of three former BFFs (who a cruel, sexist society might label ‘scorned women’), who team up following an old friend’s suicide to wreak justice on their former husbands? With an incredible, overflowing cast of amazing actors of ALL AGES, the film became a roaring success, spawned a hit soundtrack, a projected Broadway musical adaptation, and persistent rumours of a sequel, plus an eventual reputation as something of a camp classic, beloved by women and gay men that extends to Buzzfeed quizzes and Jennifer Lawrence.
As with many pre-internet films that assembled such era-defining casts, you could all too easily revisit The First Wives Club and discover that it’s become a hopelessly dated piece of fantasy that has no place being evaluated in any genuine critical context. Sure, it is a fantasy, and yes, it’s obviously dated — the laptops and mobile phones are unwieldy brick-like contraptions, and it’s probably best to just not question the exact legal implications of the club’s dirty laundry shenanigans — but the film still manages to hold up incredibly well. 18 years is a long time in Hollywood; just ask Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler. Luckily for viewers, The First Wives Club remains as tight as a young starlet’s face.
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Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves
Let’s not kid ourselves: the success of The First Wives Club doesn’t belong to the director (the same man behind the original Police Academy, if you would believe), or even the surprisingly cutting and affecting screenplay by Robert Harling (Soapdish, Steel Magnolias), with its delicious lines like “Is she a gift?”, following the inappropriateness of seeing an old man bringing a younger woman to a boy’s bar mitzvah. No, one needs look no further than the casting coup that was this ravishing ensemble.
Keaton, Hawn, and Midler — two Oscar winners and a multi-nominee respectively — share the sort of Hollywood chemistry that is impossible to manufacture. They were superstars in their day but proved they still had it with The First Wives Club, all whilst poking fun at their age, reputations and Hollywood clichés with gleeful abandon. Hawn especially has a great deal of fun, spending the first half of the movie with ridiculously over-inflated collagen lips and a near-permanent glass of vodka attached. They proved to be remarkably good sports, clearly relishing the opportunity to not just be in a rare female-fronted Hollywood comedy, but be the stars, too.
Elsewhere, the cast is populated by familiar faces at every turn. Oh look, there’s Sarah Jessica Parker as a gold-digging airhead. And there’s Stockard Channing as a depressed first wife. Marcia Gay Harden appears early as marriage counsellor with unusual methods. Everyone’s favourite Dowager, Maggie Smith, plays a New York socialite. Elizabeth Berkley shows up as an enthusiastic young actress, just a year following her near career-destroying turn in Showgirls. And then there’s Dan Hedaya, Victor Garber, Rob Reiner, Timothy Olyphant, JK Simmons, Heather Locklear, Gloria Steinem, and even Ivana Trump delivering the film’s most famous line.
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You Don’t Own Me
Despite how easy it would have been for the material to come off as little more than shrill, industry-conforming misogyny masquerading as feminist nonsense — think Sex And The City 2 and that diabolical ‘I Am Woman’ scene (or the other 140 minutes, too) — there’s actually a lot going on in The First Wives Club that makes it more than just a blip on the pop cultural radar.
For starters, it was number one at the American box office for three weeks and made over $100 million. Considering industry people still crow in shock and awe when a female-oriented movie makes it big — especially one fronted by someone who isn’t 18-25 and skinny — that feels like quite an achievement. Even in this fascinating morning news interview from 1996, the sexist double standard of the issue was raised. To quote Cate Blanchett: the world is round, people!
More than that, though, I admire the way the film allows its characters to reach conclusions that one may not expect, and to do it messily. Sure, it ends with a neat bow that sees all three central women happier and stronger, but not before allowing them to fumble in ways that reveal emotions and truths that Hollywood rarely allows of its female stars.
Just last year we had Saving Mr Banks, in which Emma Thompson’s character is repeatedly belittled and tsk-tsked for her apparently crazy beliefs (like, cartoon penguins). She’s eventually pushed into submission rather easily, thanks to the Mary Poppins tune ‘Let’s Go Fly A Kite’. In The First Wives Club, when the three women begin a rendition of Lesley Gore’s ‘You Don’t Own Me’, it’s a commanding, defiant moment, signalling their independence, not their subservience.
HBO’s Sex And The City would premiere two years later to a new generation, but it’s little surprise that audiences in 1996 responded so favourably to this film. Being sent out of the cinema to the image of three women (of, yes, middle age — all three actresses turned 50 on set) surrounded by nobody but themselves, and high-kicking into the night? Heaven. It’s never too late to remember that it’s never too late.
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The Other Woman is showing in cinemas now, but The First Wives Club is forever.
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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer and film critic from Melbourne, and currently based in New York City. His work has been seen online (Onya Magazine, Quickflix), in print (The Big Issue, Metro Magazine, Intellect Books Ltd’s World Film Locations: Melbourne), as well as heard on Joy 94.9.