Your Donations support the Site

Buy Cranky stuff


Buy Movie Posters

Top Selling DVD     Books

  BLU-RAY DVDs:
The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo
Happy Feet Two
Footloose (2011)
Tower Heist
Angels and Demons
The Rum Diary
Avatar
Batman Begins
Dark Knight
Fifth Element
The Hangover
James Bond 11 disc coll.
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Mission Impossible GP
Sherlock Holmes AGOS
Star Wars Saga
Ultimate Matrix coll
X-Men First Class
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Wolverine
 BLU-Ray for Family DVDs 
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Bambi
A Bug's Life
Cars
Chronicles of Narnia set
Coraline
Ghostbusters
Harry Potter 1-8 collection
Iron Man 2 combo
Kung Fu Panda
Lord of the Rings Trilogy Pinocchio
Pirates of Caribbean trilogy
Pixar short films
Ratatouille
Shrek the Whole Story
Sleeping Beauty
The Smurfs combo
Snow White & 7 Dwarfs
Star Trek motion pictures set
Star Wars Saga (1-6)
Toy Story combo
Toy Story 2 combo
Toy Story 3 combo
Wall-E SE

Search engine by FreeFind

click to search site

      Now in Release
The Avengers
Bernie
Carnage
Dark Shadows
Hunger Games
Joyful Noise
Killing Bono
Three Stooges
Trust

TV/Movie Collectibles

Privacy Policy

click for full sized poster

First Wives Club Starring Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton Screenplay by Robert Harling Based on the novel by Olivia Goldsmith Directed by Hugh Wilson

If you put names like Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and Diane Keaton above the title on a comedy, there is little any reviewer can say to keep the throng away. In this case, there is little negative to say about The First Wives Club, a wonderfully vindictive comedy adapted from the novel by Olivia Goldsmith.

As usual Cranky makes no comparisons to the source material but, since First Wives Club is so consistently funny, I would hope the book is, too. Onwards . . .

When they were young, they were the best of friends, though thirty years later, the four women who went to school together have drifted apart. They all have found excessively successful marriages and/or careers, but it is the suicide of one of their group that brings 'em all together.

The first wives' club is a literal image. First wives of rich husbands dumped for much younger, much thinner, much sexier "showcase" wives. Or, as Brenda (Midler) puts it "pre- schoolers." The net result of the divorces, for these women, is very little. In one case, it is the husband who demands alimony. In all cases, there is a younger woman.

A friend of mine who saw this before I did said it was male-bashing at its finest. But it isn't. The couples that populate First Wives Club are so incredibly rich, as in wealthy, that most of us will never come near the demographic. The males behave like scum, so I say sock it to 'em. It is a comedic fantasy and Goldie Hawn takes the cake. Her performance is a tour de force. Hawn's character is the one who comes up with the scheme; Midler's character (the Jewish one, go figure) comes up with the way to finance the scheme that empowers the members of the club. Keaton, appropriately named Annie Paradise (though you may have fond recollections to Annie Hall) overcomes her submission to the marital hell she has fallen into.

Hawn is the actress whose husband, the producer, rode on her coattails to wealth and fame. Midler's husband, Morty, used her family connections (to, how shall I put it, The Family) to stock his now very successful electronics business. Keaton is the loving wife of a powerful ad exec who continues to have sex with her separated ex, while he sets up habitual bliss with a person very close to both of 'em.

Tossed in, for good effect are Rob Reiner as Hawn's plastic surgeon, Stockard Channing as the First Wife whose suicide kicks the plot into action, and Heather Locklear as the replacement for Channing.

Though it lags by the end, The First Wives Club is a very enjoyable piece of work. One of the few comedies this year that has truly been comedic, as in funny.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price for The First Wives Club, he would have paid . . .

$7.00

	Click to buy films by Hugh Wilson
	Click to buy films starring Bette Midler
	Click to buy films starring Goldie Hawn
	Click to buy films starring Diane Keaton
	Click to buy films starring Sarah Jessica Parker
	Click to buy films starring Steven Collins