The First Wives Club
First screened around 1997 / Most recently screened and reviewed in September 2024, on the day we lost Maggie Smith
Director: Hugh Wilson. Cast: Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, Stockard Channing, Dan Hedaya, Sarah Jessica Parker, Maggie Smith, Ari Greenberg, Bronson Pinchot, Victor Garber, Elizabeth Berkley, Stephen Collins, Jennifer Dundas, Eileen Heckart, Marcia Gay Harden, Philip Bosco, James Naughton, Heather Locklear, Rob Reiner, Lea DeLaria, Debra Monk, J. Smith-Cameron, Timothy Olyphant, Aida Linares, Edward Hibbert, Stephen Pearlman, Kate Burton, Walter Hobbie, J.K. Simmons, Gloria Steinem, Ed Koch, Kathie Lee Gifford, Ivana Trump. Screenplay: Robert Harling (based on the novel by Olivia Goldsmith).VOR:③
Huge public response suggests rarity of this movie's treatments of divorce and female friendship and of comic ensembles anchored by mature women.
Well, now it makes sense why I didn't remember Maggie Smith being in this. A welcome seasoning, used very sparingly. Bless you, Maggie!
It's remarkable how much color and moment-to-moment liveliness Hawn and Keaton can bring to one-dimensional figures in a comedy. Keaton finds a dozen different shades of self-abasing apology and Hawn plays drunk over and over without seeming stuck, or overplaying, or staying at one pitch. That's acting, as opposed to what Midler mostly does, which is mugging, indicating, and line-slinging. All on-screen evidence suggests that the costuming and makeup teams also enjoyed their time with Keaton and Hawn but maybe not so much with their co-lead. (Offscreen scuttlebutt points in the same direction.)
The First Wives Club is a great example of a sprightly entertainment, a fan favorite, and a valuable market corrective that you can't really stretch to call a good movie (unless those are your top criteria, in which case, agreed!). The script by Steel Magnolias scribe Robert Harling does well by its zingers but barely strings a story together. Subplots and even center-ring dramatic logic get tossed aside even faster than an aging first wife. Episodes like a meat-locker entrapment or an escape from a penthouse apartment smell unmistakably like unrisen soufflé... whereas the perfectly calculated musical sendoff is as "soufflé" as you can get. Nail your ending, and people will love your film.
Few sequences come across as well-shot, well-lit, well-cut, or well directed, but the movie whips up a good deal of affection, through premise and star performance but also through a vivid supporting cast, of whom Sarah Jessica Parker, in her mid-90s comic prime, is the most inspired. Not everyone finds a way to play the stock or even sub-stock parts they've been handed, but the sheer abundance of tony talent that's signed up for single-scene work or even wordless walk-ons suggests a movie whose spirit and gist excited a lot of people in the industry, and soon enough in its enormous audiences. Unsurprisingly, Hollywood once again decided to view this massive commercial success as an anomaly, not to be repeated any time soon, rather than a neon arrow pointing to an underserved audience that is eager to leap, even when the execution is half-baked. Grade:B–
