So much average

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Believe it: She-Devil was my first introduction to…Meryl Streep. And say what you will about this movie, I really liked her in this.She isn't just an artist. She is thee artist in Hollywood. From this viewing or many, MANY, more when I was a child, she appears to have taken this role very seriously. Much like when I watched Megan Mullally perform live as Karen Walker at a taping of Will & Grace. Both Karen, and Streep's Mary Fisher are silly roles, and yet they're treated professionally.I appreciate that. And the movie.Now, far from perfect – and I'm not even speaking of the terrible FX (SEE: the house blow up and how Roseanne Barr is nowhere near that,) it's a fun watch. It's fun that Barr's Ruth is not Barr's normal role, like in her – at the time, future – role on her hit TV show. I liked how she had a plan of revenge, or more accurately justice, and didn't have to stoop to lowbrow "humor" as Melissa McCarthy has to do today. In fact, I would back this Ruth over any of McCarthy's ladies I've seen on screen.I digress. Housewife Ruth's husband cheats on her with famed romance novelist, Mary and she devotes her time to tearing down the things that he states mean the most to him.That's it, for the premise, at least. There are a lot of funny moments, good secondary characters, and Maria Pitillo, who I recently reviewed in 1998's Godzilla, and oddly dropped off the Hollywood map 5 years ago. Anyways, I liked how it wasn't straight forward for Ruth. She grew as a person and had to continually improvise and adapt for her plan to work.And Streep's Mary, was a fun watch, especially when you can see she's not the dumb blonde she mostly portrays. Note: the glasses push-up.Sure, it's predictable and some scenes are pretty far-fetched, but it was fun when I was growing up with this as it is today. I liked the soundtrack, some of the lines and the relationships Ruth makes during her journey. And I definitely understand more of what they were saying now, than I did as a kid. Totally recommended.

Director Susan Seidelman's tale (script from Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns) of a woman scorned and her sweet revenge on the man who betrays her is nothing more than a flat fairytale with a cast full of unlikeable characters.It is nearly impossible to sympathise with heroine Roseann Barr, whose jaded housewife is so bitter and vengeful it's frightening. Yes Ed Begley's cheatin' husband is a complete tosser, but considering every player is no more palatable than sour lemons, he really ain't that bad. Barr and Begley fail to inspire, and Streep never quite hits the mark in her first big venture into comedy. The one exception to the rule is the ever enjoyable Linda Hunt, who shines as a nursing home matron from the old school who comes out of her shell after meeting Ruth Patchett (Barr).Frankly I don't enjoy watching nasty people doing awful things to one another. The poor plot certainly does not help.Sunday, October 19, 1997 - Video

I'm not a fan of Roseanne Barr (or whatever she calls herself now), but this movie was a definite misfire. While the casting is awful--Ed Begley Jr. as anybody but a nebbish is simply wrong and Meryl Streep makes you wonder why she won anything related to an award for her acting--the film's overtones are very strange.On the gender side, this movie attempts to make itself into a moralistic feminist play about how women are always mistreated by men. Unfortunately, the character of Ruth negates this by being more manipulative than her husband, especially in regards to using his second mistress to help frame him for fraud. Also, she takes on a very strange attitude towards revenge by attempting to destroy Meryl Streep before going after her husband. While her list notes that her husband is her focus, the movie takes an odd turn by seeking out Meryl's character as a moral lesson while destroying her husband. The film can never really rectify why Ruth hates her husband so much that she's going after the woman who supposedly lured him away. The film's ending takes some satisfaction in changing Mary into a more bitter and 'learned' woman but doesn't really offer a real solution. Is Ruth going after her husband through this woman? And if she blames her husband for this, why is she going to such great lengths to destroy Mary since her husband is simply the kind of jerk who uses and then leaves women? Shouldn't have Ruth found more common ground with Mary after a while? And if one sees this through a class sensibility, Ruth's whole mission becomes pointlessly sadistic. Mary is of a higher-class and is rich to an extent. Ruth is a poor and ugly housewife with limited means. At the end, Ruth raises in class while Mary remains the same. Hence, Ruth could be seen as using her husband's infidelity as a means to rise above her own station. While Ruth's narrative diatribes about Mary 'learning' about being a wife are meant to be seen as some kind of validation for the troubles of a housewife who has to deal with various troubles to keep a family intact, it's hard not to notice that Ruth at the end will not go back to being the very housewife she supports. By rising herself out of revenge, she in fact becomes an image of Mary but causes her whole actions throughout the movie to be negated. Her whole character's motivation hinges on being an abused lower-class housewife who is going to knock down the higher-class woman down for stealing her man and at the end becomes exactly the same: successful in her own right. This is hypocrisy at its finest. And the dumping of her own children as some sort of object on their father completes the hypocrisy. The image of a housewife is something to be shown on a pedestal, but isn't recommended for a way of living. While this could mirror the life of Roseanne, it simply does not fit. How can you support a woman who is supposed to be an everyday woman (as the conceit goes) fighting for a sense of justice when she turns out to be the same as the woman who stole her man? This whole angle of thinking is what sinks the movie. Are we seeing revenge for Ruth, or are we seeing her fight back over the loss of property in the form of a husband which she doesn't want back anyway? And the movie cannot resolve this because then we get into weighty issues about what being a housewife truly is. By marketing itself as some sort of comical Lifetime Movie of the Week, the movie supports a position as the housewife/mother being some sort of holy figure to be supported and idealized. But with the ending showcasing a housewife 'evolved' into a businesswoman who joins the kids she abandoned as a part of her revenge to the husband she doesn't want back, this negates the whole plot. Why didn't she just dump her kids on the husband and forget about them all? The point of the revenge was to assuage her ego, which then marks the housewife/mother/Jesus figure as some sort of prison which one must escape since it was formed by a man. But since without the man this illusion breaks down, the movie instead becomes the story of a woman who seeks to better herself after a horrible betrayal and instead dwells in the past for petty revenge, hence sinking her moral high ground for absolutely nothing.

This movie was made early on in Roseanne's TV career. The movie character of "Ruth" is not far off from her TV character, i.e. overweight, frumpy, but the movie has a far different plot from her cohesive, despite dysfunctional TV family. In the movie version, she is a doting yet overwhelmed housewife, devoted to her husband, until her cheats on her and subsequently leave her and the kids for a more promising life with a romance novelist.I think this movie has been given a bum-rap by critics. Roseanne is funny, the supporting cast is good, and Meryl Streep is her usual excellent self.This movie is a good one for a rainy day. Highly watchable, hard to fault. Those that expect perfection from any movie with a plot such as this are overreaching.