Official Site of Marcia Gay Harden :: The Work

After years of helping their hubbies climb the ladder of success, three wives have been dumped for newer, curvier models. But the trio is determined to turn their pain into gain. They come up with a cleverly devious plan to hit their exes where it really hurts - in the wallet! Sit back and watch the sparks fly as The Wives get mad, get even and get it all. Justice has seldom been so sweet. Or so much fun.

Director: Hugh Wilson

SF Gate Review - 'Wives' Get Even and Even More

Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton play middle-aged Manhattanites who form an alliance when their husbands dump them for younger, sexy-but-dumb trophy girlfriends.

It's a glamorous revenge romp, a "9 to 5" mixed with "Auntie Mame," and it gives each star the opportunity to do her best work in a long, long time. What's surprising isn't that each of them is so delightfully good -- we've seen Midler's "Ruthless People," Hawn's "Private Benjamin," Keaton's "Annie Hall" for feats of inspired foolishness -- but that they work together so well.

Directed by Hugh Wilson ("Police Academy" and "Guarding Tess"), written by Robert Harling ("Steel Magnolias") and based on a novel by Olivia Goldsmith, "The First Wives Club" opens when the unbilled Stockard Channing, playing a college chum of the three stars, jumps off her Park Avenue terrace after losing her husband.

Cast true to type, Midler's a Jewish harpie and heiress who sets up her tacky spouse (Dan Hedaya) in the electronics business, only to lose him to shapely airhead Sarah Jessica Parker.

Hawn's a fading movie queen, so full of collagen and surgical amendments that Midler dubs her "a Beverly Hills science project."

Her husband (Victor Garber) uses her bucks to flourish as a producer, ditches her for a spandex- and-silicone nightmare (Elizabeth Berkley of "Showgirls") and then has the gall to demand alimony.

Keaton, an overapologetic doormat, weathers the ultimate disgrace when her husband (Stephen Collins) takes up with her therapist (Marcia Gay Harden), then gets a shock when her daughter (Jennifer Dundas) announces that she's a lesbian.

"We're has-beens, discards," Midler tells her sisters-in-suffering. "We're hanging on by a thread."