SundanceNagrial
I loved this movie! I watched Roseanne religiously growing up in the 90's, so this was a nice walk down memory lane, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching Meryl Streep play a Gorgeously ritzy, self-deluded, Spoiled blonde. Awesome. Anyone else playing the role of 'Mary', and I would've probably found her annoying. Yet, Meryl Streep is an amazing actress with more emotional depth on her pinkie than most of the actresses in Hollywood today, so to see her play a role so far beneath her her original stature is pure pleasure, she gives her character profoundness, Roseanne played her role perfectly, It was fun and exciting to see what her character would do next. I enjoyed it thoroughly! - SundanceNagrial
ElMaruecan82
Susan Seidelman's "She Devil" is a comedy that works on a simple but efficient formula: opposition. The opening credits consists on a delicate and feminine music, a Santa Barbara- like cursive writing, and several shots of glamorous women putting on some make-up, lipstick or perfume, like in these corny cosmetic ads, so typical of the 80's. In fact, the whole intro is so cliché that we expect a punch-line. And rightfully, we get one when emerges the face of Rita, Roseanne Barr as the unpleasant, plump, average-looking and (not yet) desperate housewife, the soon-to-be She-Devil.Roseanne Barr, whose breakthrough role in "Roseanne" had already launched her career; has never been considered a beautiful woman, yet she still pushes herself to the most atrocious physical limits by adding a big mole on her upper lip. It takes some great deal of courage to abuse one's own image, but it's essential to recreate the perfect contrast with Meryl Streep, who incarnates Rita's nemesis, a rich "roman rose" writer, beautiful, blonde, distinguished and literate, a caricature in all pinkness and sophistication. The film is often credited for featuring the first comedic role of the ultimate drama actress. Is she good? Delightfully: Streep's capability to caricature herself and play a woman who takes herself so seriously almost works like a refreshing self-derision, deserving the Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy.The opposition between Rita and Mary is the core of the story; the whole narrative depends on our empathy toward the ugly duckling and our sadistic delight to see the beautiful princess' life falls apart. Oddly enough, Mary and Rita hardly interact. The intercessor is Bob, Rita's unfaithful husband played by Ed Begley Jr., probably the only actor whose hair can compete with Meryl Streep's. With his tall and athletic body and his elegant demeanor, it's a wonder how he and Rita ended up together. When Mary finds out he's married, "it's too bad" she says, to which he replies "it's too late": not to have some sex though. Indeed, after Rita dropped some drink on Mary's pink dress, he apologetically suggests driving her home. What did Rota expect? Still, although she suspects Bob to be screwing around, she gives him the benefit of the doubt. It's not until a disastrous dinner in front of her stepparents that Bob can't take it anymore and leaves the house. He then delivers the film's pivotal rant, against his wife. Rita remains silent, contemplating the failure of her own marriage while Bob lists the four assets he most valued: a house, a family, a career and freedom. Not part of them, Rita decides to destroy these sacred pillars one by one. At least, she'd deserve to be called a "liability", and worse, a "she-devil". The film turns into a delightful revenge comedy, working like a missing link between two movies of the same year : "Look Who's Talking" and "The War of the Roses".Like "Look Who's Talking", "She Devil" is a sweet and entertaining family comedy appealing to a younger audience while the main target are adults; it has its share of goofiness and physical humor, but under the surface, there is a lot of wit and sensitivity. I guess it's not a coincidence that both movies were released by women, which might explain the choice of tone, apparently sweet enough to hide a good amount of bitterness, like a frail and fragile woman hiding a burning flame inside her heart, like all the everyday heroines of Rita's employment center. And the film works thanks to this distance, this capability to turn every situation into something both insightful and comical, it's almost like a trick so the movie could win men's hearts despite its feminist undertones.Take the scene where Rita, who had just destroyed the house, sends the kids to Mary's house, to break up her idyllic routine with Bob. This is one of the movies' funniest and smartest moves: while many mothers would have played the "victim" card and console themselves by keeping the kids (which any cheating husband would expect), Rita doesn't lament on herself, and just reverse the roles between the mistress and the housewife. With more free time, she works as a nurse in a hospice where she teams up with Hooper (Linda Hunt) another woman touched by an ungrateful looks. Then, she manages to get Mary's mother (Sylvia Miles) off the house. The mother is another scene-stealer, finishing the mayhem started by the kids, and ruining all the facade Mary built during her successful career, starting with her age.And the marital conflict, the whole love-and-hate relationship between Bob and Rita reminds of "The War of the Roses", a superior masterpiece of Black humor starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. "She Devil", with a bit of schmaltz's, is as politically incorrect and even flirts with very borderline humor, having a luscious butler (played by A. Martinez) flirting with Rita's teenage daughter and some implicit sex scenes … the film assumes some crudeness even though it tries to sugarcoat it. And while we empathize with Rita's feminist career, it's impossible not to resist to Ed Begley as the victim. Yet we know we're watching a slow but possible redemption. The same goes for Mary Fisher who learns not to take her success for granted and tries to change.This is what elevates the film above the basic standards of comedy: its characters play like archetypes, but they do change for the best. The ending has something very inspirational: the looks on Roseanne while she walks and smiles surrounded by an army of female underdogs during the "You Look Like an Angel" song is almost beautiful. And then we understand why she had to be so 'ugly' at the start, less for the contrast with Streep than with herself at the end, which is even more satisfying.She might have looked like a devil, but she was an angel in disguise.
Nick Zbu
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.
