The Stepford Wives (DVD)

The Paramount Pictures remake machine stepped back to 1975 in an attempt to bring the film that made "Stepford wife" a common term into the modern era, unfortunately things didn't turn out as good as they could have considering a great cast of names and a story that could have either been very funny, or very freaky, but ends up just a little of both.

Stepford Wives tells the story of the perfect community of Stepford, where the wives have an all-to-perfect secret and the geeky tech-boom husbands are living in the lap of luxury thanks to a particular technological advance.

While not a major box-office success, and by no means a flop, one thing is for sure this was not a critical darling. The movie never really found its footing as it couldn't figure exactly which side of the genre fence it fell on. There are several moments of hilarity and moments of creeps but never enough of one or the other to really give the movie a groove to fall in.

Considering the fact that this movie didn't fare terribly well in the minds of the critics, that didn't stop Paramount from putting together a wide variety of special features to accompany the DVD release.

From Frank Oz's audio commentary to looks at every aspect of making the film there is more than enough to satisfy movie watchers that did enjoy the film, but it just turns into overkill for those that found watching the movie more than enough Stepford.

Included in the special features is the before-mentioned Frank Oz commentary, a making-of featurette, a look at the Stepford Wives and Stepford Husbands, a look at set design, deleted scenes, a gag reel and trailers. Of the features I will commend the making-of feature to being an actual making-of feature that does more than just give a simple look at the actors involved, but at the actual making of the movie, as does Frank Oz's commentary even though he seems to forget what he said five minutes earlier and repeat it, he does give good insight into the movie.

Overall, I can't recommend this title, simply because I didn't like it that much. It is a decent rental considering there is nothing else that catches your eye, but beyond that, I would say definitely skip it, and certainly don't buy it unless you are sure it is the one to add to your collection.