Prickly characters, crassness mar 'The Women'

At a pivotal point in Diane English's "The Women," Mary Haines says to her best friend Sylvia Fowler, "You act as if this is some 1930s movie!"

The joke is, of course, that "The Women" began as a 1936 play by Clare Boothe Luce, then became a 1939 movie by famed "women's director" George Cukor. Even today, his original comedy of female manners maintains an edge completely lost in English's remake.

This is really too bad, considering that TV's "Murphy Brown" creator English, an ardent booster of women buddy movies, spent years trying to launch this remake. With a modest budget of $15 million, and a less-expensive Boston filling in nicely for New York City, she finally put it together, only to have turn out to be a strained, silver-screen sitcom populated by mugging actresses playing prickly characters you wouldn't want to be stuck with in an elevator.

The one exception might be the Countess, a loopy serial divorcee played by the Divine Miss M, Bette Midler. Unfortunately, her character gets a nanosecond of screen time compared to her 1939 counterpart.

The story, set in the upper echelons of New York's social elite, centers around an affair between sweet Mary Haines' never-seen executive husband and a gold-digging perfume counter girl over at Saks. Mary is played by Meg Ryan, still afflicted with head-shaking ticks of her titular character from "When Harry Met Sally."

Her best friend Sylvia (Annette Bening), a high-gloss magazine editor, first hears about the affair from a brash manicurist (Debi Mazar) who naively fingers Mr. Haines as the adulterous partner of the spritzing Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes in appropriate skank mode).

Sylvia passes the gossip along to the pregnant and loud Edie Cohen (Debra Messing of TV's "Will and Grace") and the edgy, openly lesbian Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith). They appear to be the kind of old and trusted friends that only reside in a Hollywood movie. When they attempt a group intervention, Mary reveals she already knows about the liaison, thanks to the blabby manicurist.

Mary's decision to dump the hubby meets resistance from her life-experienced mother Catherine ("Murphy Brown" herself, Candice Bergen). Women, she says, keep families together by overlooking their husbands' meaningless indiscretions.

Nonetheless, Mary presses for a divorce, plunging her tiny, privileged world into a dither, precipitating betrayals and bitterness that destroy relationships. In Cukor's version, starring Norma Shearer as Mary, Rosalind Russell as Sylvia and Joan Crawford as Crystal, they did. In English's remake, sisterly solidarity blunts the trauma and the drama.

Where Cukor used Altmanesque camera movements and characters crisscrossing in front of the lens to open up Luce's play, English utilizes a flat, made-for-TV visual style.

Where Cukor cranked the dialogue up to jogging speed, English lets her characters amble.

Even with tight restrictions during the 1930s, Cukor's divorce comedy feels bold and sophisticated. English infuses Judd Apatow-esque crassness into her scenes, with characters brandishing tampons and Victoria's No-Secrets-Possible underwear.

Sophistication?

In the remake, that goes quickly by the wayside.

"The Women"

1½ stars (out of four)

Starring: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler

Directed by: Diane English

Other: A Picturehouse Entertainment release. Rated PG-13 for drug use, language and sexual situations. 114 minutes.