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She-Devil
The Movie:
She-Devil is a terrific combination of a female revenge fantasy and a parody of made-for-TV melodramas. If it were made today, it would be a direct parody of the "wronged woman" Lifetime Channel dramas and would star Will Ferrell and Kristen Wigg. Who knows, maybe their upcoming Lifetime Channel movie (yes, that's a thing) will have a similar tone.
Everything in She-Devil, the gaudy production design, the unapologetically operatic score, the manic acting, the harsh lighting, and the bonkers screenplay, is delightfully over-the-top. Director Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan) makes sure the word "subtlety" doesn't enter into a single frame of her film as she lets her actors chew the scenery any way they please. It was a minor flop when it was released in 1989, perhaps because the audience wasn't ready for its abrasive tone. But in our Funny Or Die-style contemporary world, such an approach is usually welcomed with open arms.
High off her success with the then-hit sitcom Roseanne, Roseanne Barr stars in her only feature film starring role to date (And more than likely ever, unless someone produces a uber-realistic movie about her real life as a peanut farmer) as Ruth, the unappreciated suburban wife of archetypal womanizing douchebag Bob (Ed Begley, Jr.). When Bob leaves Ruth for the snooty romance novelist Mary Fisher (Meryl Streep), Ruth vows to destroy Bob's life. She writes down every aspect of Bob's existence on a piece of paper and crosses them out one by one as she exacts her revenge. And you thought Kill Bill was the first movie to rip off that motif from Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black.
Seidelman has a ball as she plays around with the operatic technical tropes of lazy melodramas. The moment Bob and Mary meet, Seidelman cuts to awkward extreme close-ups of the actors' eyes, longingly looking at each other. She's so not afraid to hammer in any metaphor with such a giddy blunt heavy handedness, that by the time a character literally shows the devil's red eyes, it somehow organically fits the tone of the rest of the film. Howard Shore's goofily operatic score treats the material like a Shakespearean tragedy.
Barr's strengths as a comedian are used excellently in the film. The humble yet headstrong personality of her sitcom character is fused very well with a devious trickster in order to create the last woman on earth any man would want to mess with. She-Devil was Meryl Streep's first out and out comedy role, and she knocks it out of the park as she takes genuine chances with a part that called for an unholy amount of hysteria.
The one glaring issue with the film concerns the character development. As soon as Rose is wronged by her husband, she turns into a meticulous and incredibly efficient revenge machine, when such an intellect and drive wasn't hinted at during the first act. Even though this is an over-the-top comedy, one still deserves some consistency.
The Blu-ray:
Video:
She-Devil shines on Blu-ray with a clean 1080p transfer that's almost completely devoid of scratches and dirt. The pastel colors of the cinematography and the stark lighting are all represented loyally, and even though it appears that some DNR was used, there's still a healthy amount of grain.
Audio:
She-Devil is presented with a single track of DTS-HD 2.0 stereo. A 5.1 presentation would of course have been preferable, especially as far as the enjoyment of Howard Shore's score is concerned, but the stereo mix offers a decent amount of depth and clarity. What I don't understand is why no subtitle options are offered. Not even an English for the hearing impaired option can be found.
Extras:
We get absolutely nothing.
Final Thoughts:
She-Devil is a manic comedy that has aged considerably well. Yes, it definitely looks and sounds like it was made in the late 80s, but its sly and mean humor fits into our contemporary tastes. The performances are fittingly ridiculous, and impressive enough to make me wish Barr was given a couple more chances with film acting. Also, Streep's role is a nice precursor to her similar part in The Devil Wears Prada.
Oktay Ege Kozak is a film critic and screenwriter based in Portland, Oregon. He also writes for The Playlist, The Oregon Herald, and Beyazperde.com
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