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“The Women” is one of my all time favorite classic movies. The original movie (based on the play by Clare Boothe Luce) was made in the 1930’s and starred the divine Norma Shearer in the lead with an absolutely wicked Joan Crawford playing the role of the home wrecking bitch. Supporting cast members included the incomparable Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Hedda Hopper and Mary Boland.

It’s got everything you need in the ultimate classic movie – sassy dames, smart dialogue and excellent acting. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend getting a big tub of popcorn and a warm blanket on one of the upcoming crisp autumn nights and curling up with this gem. It’s good for what ails ya. It’s absolute perfection.

Most of us know that you just don’t mess with perfection, but it seems that Hollywood (in it’s continuing mission to leave no cultural legacy unplundered) has decided that what the world needs right now is a re-make of “The Women.”

That alone would have my eyebrows arching towards the ceiling already, but when you add the words “starring Meg Ryan” to it, you have me flinging my Entertainment Weekly at the wall and screaming.

Really? Meg Ryan? Of all the actresses in the entire world you could choose for this delicious succulent of a role…you choose her? I love “When Harry Met Sally” and I think Meg was the perfect actress for that role, but have you seen anything she’s done recently? I watched part of that horrible movie she made with Andy Garcia and part of the equally horrible movie she made with Russell Crowe. And of course, I’ve watched her face get more and more “Joker “ from Tim Burton’s Batman-esque with every surgery she’s had over the last decade in increasingly desperate seeming attempts to keep her credentials as the “cute, sexy, girl next door.” You can’t quite pull that off as well at 45 as you could at 30. No matter what Dr. Beverly Hills tells you he can do.

For the record, I’m not anti-plastic surgery. I am emphatically pro-plastic surgery. The only thing that keeps me from stapling the top of my forehead over to the back of my neck is sheer lack of indecorous wealth. But these things must be done with subtlety and finesse. One doesn’t want to wreak such havoc upon one’s personal appearance that the first thing everyone says after your appearance on Oprah is “What the hell has Meg Ryan done to her face?”

Cast in the home wrecker/vamp role we have Eva Mendes. Yes, really. Did you know she just got out of rehab? Me neither! Know why? Who cares? They’re casting the woman who was most recently seen stinking up the screen in “Ghost Rider” in the Joan Crawford role? The one who gets to utter that wickedly delicious line: “There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn’t used in high society…outside of a kennel.”

That is, if the writers decide that audiences in this day and age have enough intelligence and wit about them to make sense of dialogue that snaps and cracks in all the right places like that one did. They’ll probably dumb it down and just have Crystal call Peggy a bitch. Spell it out, dumb it down. Use small words.

There are some very good actresses associated with this project that would, under ordinary circumstances, give me reason to hope. Annette Bening picks up the Rosalind Russel role as Sylvia. Bette Midler has been cast as someone named Leah Miller. I don’t remember any “Miller” in the original, but if I were a betting man, I’d bet that it’s a re-envisioning of the Countess De Lave role originally played to the hilt by Mary Boland. Bette could definitely throw some electricity into that role. Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman have all been cast as well. That’s a pretty solid block of talent to plunk down in your outfield when you have such a second string pitcher. Do they know something I don’t know? Was the script just breathtakingly clever and intelligent enough, doing the original movie justice enough that these actresses agreed to sign on? Dare I hope?

It was at this point that I went to www.imdb.com and I watched the trailer. Oh. My. God. This movie is going to stink up the Cineplex. This is beyond awful. This is…this is…

This is Sidney Pollack’s remake of “Sabrina” with Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford level bad.

It’s like a bunch of Hollywood white men got in a room and said “Hey we have to figure something out to get the ‘Sex and the City’ gals back to the theaters to see our movie! What’s in the vaults? Hey, can we re-write this? Only, let’s shake it up a bit. Throw in a lesbian, add some really stale ‘woman in labor’ cliches and take every bit of class and snap out of the dialogue.” Ugh! After seeing this trailer, I kind of want to find those men and stab them in the nuts with a salad fork.

I know that there are plenty of bright, creative young minds out there coming up with original screenplays. Why this fascination with re-doing the classics? I really wish Hollywood would stop trying to paint a New and Improved smile on the Mona Lisa and sell us the same painting over and over again. Only uglier.

And lest any of us think that it’s just the old black and white Hollywood classics that are getting this “re-envisioning and updating” rehash treatment - they’re coming for us too, children of the 80’s! I’ve heard a scurrilous rumor that they’re remaking “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”That alone made me scream in incoherent rage and want to stab things, but then I found out that a remake of “The Breakfast Club” has been made (I believe it’s called “Bumped”) with another coming up right behind it. There’s a rumor about a “Pretty In Pink” update in the works as well.

So who wants to join me in the salad fork to the private parts convoy to Hollywood? 

Here’s trailer for “The Women” remake:

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