15 Underrated Movie Remakes That Deserve Another Look

Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives has never had a perfect adaptation, with filmmakers either being too faithful to the source or deviating too far. Bryan Forbes’ 1975 version is in the former camp, although most consider it to be the definitive adaptation. Frank Oz waited until 2004 to remake it, by the time “Stepford Wives” had entered common parlance and everyone had their own vision of what it should be.

The 2004 Stepford Wives sees Joanna Eberhart and her husband Walter Kresby (Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick) move to Stepford after Joanna’s career falls to pieces, where life is a neo-trad dream and the women are controlled by nanochips in their brains. Unfortunately audiences weren’t fussed for it, it didn’t break even, and critics dragged it through the mud. And yet.

Oz took the original and the novel and struck a totally different tone, making something genuinely funny and highlighting the plot’s absurdity. It is something of a slapstick romp, and lacks the sinister overtones of the original, but this is precisely why it works.

The characters feel more lived-in, especially Joanna, and the film has an even stronger gender focus, portraying the men as weak and jealous of their high-powered wives. The film’s only major flaw is that it doesn’t know when to stop. Nevertheless, it’s ever-more relevant today, when an increased amount of Western men seek a return to an idealised 1950s where "domestic bliss" was the order of the day.