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Some delicious, over-the-top scenery chewing by the divine Meryl Streep is the primary reason to check out a bizarre black comedy from 1989 called She-Devil.
The film stars Roseanne Barr as Ruth, a frumpy and insecure housewife and mother who is crushed to learn that her accountant/husband, Bob (Ed Begley Jr.) has begun to have an affair with a glamorous romance novelist named Mary Fisher (Streep). When Bob finally decides to leave Ruth, she then sets out on an elaborate plan to exact revenge on her scummy husband, beginning with burning their home to the ground and sending her children to live with Bob and Mary.
This film was made during Roseanne's hiatus from the first season of her classic sitcom and was intended to make a movie star out of her, but failed dismally, primarily due to the fact that the character Roseanne plays here is not as smart or appealing as Roseanne Conner and it's hard to get behind a lot of Ruth's actions in this movie. It's a little hard to believe that a wronged wife would actually destroy her children's home merely as a way of getting back at her husband, which is also hard to buy because the character of Bob is really a jerk and why Ruth cares about his feelings or why Mary finds herself attracted to him are a mystery as well, which for me was the primary problem with this story...the character of Bob was just not worth these two women fighting over.
Director Susan Seidleman, who scored a bullseye five years earlier with Desperately Seeking Susan really misses here, but she is hampered by a screenplay that is kind of all over the place and some really unlikable characters, especially Barr's Ruth, who is supposed to evoke sympathy from the viewer, but does just the opposite.
What this film does have going for it is a perfectly executed comedy turn from the fabulous Meryl Streep, who manages to mine every bit of humor out of her character that the screenplay provides. As for the rest of the cast, Ed Begley Jr. is miscast as Bob and some minor laughs are provided along the way by Sylvia Miles as Mary's mother, who loves to tell anyone who will listen what a loser her daughter is and A Martinez as Mary's manservant/boy toy, but this is Streep's show all the way and without her, this film would have been impossible to get through.
The film stars Roseanne Barr as Ruth, a frumpy and insecure housewife and mother who is crushed to learn that her accountant/husband, Bob (Ed Begley Jr.) has begun to have an affair with a glamorous romance novelist named Mary Fisher (Streep). When Bob finally decides to leave Ruth, she then sets out on an elaborate plan to exact revenge on her scummy husband, beginning with burning their home to the ground and sending her children to live with Bob and Mary.
This film was made during Roseanne's hiatus from the first season of her classic sitcom and was intended to make a movie star out of her, but failed dismally, primarily due to the fact that the character Roseanne plays here is not as smart or appealing as Roseanne Conner and it's hard to get behind a lot of Ruth's actions in this movie. It's a little hard to believe that a wronged wife would actually destroy her children's home merely as a way of getting back at her husband, which is also hard to buy because the character of Bob is really a jerk and why Ruth cares about his feelings or why Mary finds herself attracted to him are a mystery as well, which for me was the primary problem with this story...the character of Bob was just not worth these two women fighting over.
Director Susan Seidleman, who scored a bullseye five years earlier with Desperately Seeking Susan really misses here, but she is hampered by a screenplay that is kind of all over the place and some really unlikable characters, especially Barr's Ruth, who is supposed to evoke sympathy from the viewer, but does just the opposite.
What this film does have going for it is a perfectly executed comedy turn from the fabulous Meryl Streep, who manages to mine every bit of humor out of her character that the screenplay provides. As for the rest of the cast, Ed Begley Jr. is miscast as Bob and some minor laughs are provided along the way by Sylvia Miles as Mary's mother, who loves to tell anyone who will listen what a loser her daughter is and A Martinez as Mary's manservant/boy toy, but this is Streep's show all the way and without her, this film would have been impossible to get through.