The First Wives Club

The movie, from the 1992 best seller by Olivia Goldsmith, isn't deathless art. But as pure entertainment, this witty revenge romp is sinfully satisfying.Read Full Review »

And thanks to great existential one-liners from scriptwriter Robert Harling (with appropriate plaudits to novelist Olivia Goldsmith, of course), gender warfare is made amusing for almost everyone.Read Full Review »

The film is played as witchy, all-star vamping with a lethal sting. What makes its premise especially funny is that, at heart, it's no laughing matter.Read Full Review »

We're here for catty one-liners, movie-star camaraderie and fur-flying vengeance, and, in spite of a regrettable wimpiness that creeps in toward the end, that's what we get.Read Full Review »

Yet with so much going for it, the film's creators have made the classic Hollywood choice and treated its actresses like flesh-and-blood special effects. If you've got talent like this, or so the theory goes, a coherent story is a luxury that can be dispensed with.Read Full Review »

The First Wives Club has all the conviction a comedy of female vengeance needs. But as soon as the dumb plot takes over, the wit leaks out of the movie like helium from a balloon.Read Full Review »

But as badly as the younger women in The First Wives Club are treated, none of the three central characters, with whom we're supposed to identify so strongly, comes off that well either.Read Full Review »

The First Wives Club has a femme casting coup for the ages, and sometimes it only takes the right performers interacting to give sprightly fluff indispensable showmanship. [20 Sep 1996 Pg.01.D]Read Full Review »

There is undoubtedly a movie to be made about this material -- a different movie.Read Full Review »

Unfortunately, although there are a few nasty thorns here and there, The First Wives Club is a largely uninspired (and unfunny) comedy that collapses completely in the final fifteen minutes.Read Full Review »