This kind of movie, not unlike most of women magazines, is there to make money by reassuring those poor women who cannot afford someone with a penis (for instance, a man), and who will believe that having a bunch of female friends full of advices is better than a man in your bed. Apart for those who find homosexuality worth giving up men, and thus might have a real interest in seeking female friends instead of male ones, how can such movies pretend to give any solution or consolation ?
Moreover, this movie for women, written by women, and featuring only actresses (and one male baby actor) is as stupid as movies for men, with only men, and made by men (there might be more of this latter kind, but that is certainly not a reason for creating crap...).
But the biggest scandal of the whole thing might be that it is featuring rich New York people, played by rich Hollywood people (who want their money back with interests, plus your brains in bonus), and destined to be shown to poor credule New Jersey people who certainly cannot afford such a wealthy living (nor such expensive face lifts) but will dribble all their saliva with envy.
Anyway the good point was that, unlike "male movies", they did spend at least half of their time talking about the other sex... Wait, now the problem would be to determine for which of the "male" or "female" genre of movies this actually was a good point... ? I'm not in favor of (nor against) any of the two kinds here, my advice, to those poor women (or men ?) who seek consolation after they were dumped, would be that they watch any good movie, made either by a man o a woman, that would not talk about one or both sexes, but simply about love (it seems not to exist for magazines, sorry).
Finally, Clare Boothe Luce's play has been adapted so many times, why bother watching this version, when Cukor and Fassbinder both already directed other versions ? "Because it was directed by a woman" is not a reason good enough !
A pretty little film with a simple regular story of love and divorce. Although being played by good actors (children and adults), there's a big accumulation of clichés and déjà vus (conflicts between parents and children, use of trendy musics - among which Cat Power's "The Greatest", diary narration in voice-over...).
There was a time, back in the eighties, where action movies, although featuring worse special effects than today, were sometimes realistic enough to somehow deserve our appreciation. Even though it was a bit too spectacular to be realistic, for one cop on holiday (and without shoes !) to take down himself all of the bad guys in a skyscraper, a masterpiece like "Die Hard" had everything to please its audience (good actors, good story, good humor, and a very efficient direction).
