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BY PETER KEOUGH
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Except as a perverse model of form mirroring content, Frank Oz’s "black comic" remake of the 1975 original (itself a campy, suburban variation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers) has little reason to exist. The New York Times has outlined the film’s pre-release woes, the re-edits, the reshoots, the futile search for an ending. Here Christopher Walken is the town leader who comes up with the program to turn the uppity wives of tony Stepford, Connecticut, into Better Homes and Gardens -perfect Barbie Dolls. (Almost perfect, that is: when one seizes up during a square dance, she’s a perfect metaphor for Oz’s patchwork fabrications.) Enter supercharged Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman), a black-clad TV executive from New York (lethal and smiling, she’s the anti–Stepford Wife) with her mousy husband Walter (Matthew Broderick). Joanna has lost her job (the film’s promising opening suggests that the ’70s movie Oz should be remaking is Network) and nearly her mind, and the family have moved to Stepford for her post-ECT rehab. I know I’ve said it about her last two movies, but this is Kidman’s worst performance to date. Half of her line readings sound as if they should be accompanied by drooling, as in "What . . . have . . . you . . . done . . . to . . . her?" Then again, almost no one — the exceptions are Bette Midler as the funny Jew, Roger Bart as the funny gay guy, and Meryl Streep as Wellington’s wife, whom Bart aptly describes as "fabulous!" — has enough personality to make the transition to automaton worth noting. (115 minutes)
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