REVENGE IS SWEET… AND LOW.
When her husband (Ed Begley, Jr.) leaves her for a glamorous romance novelist (Meryl Streep), an oppressed housewife (Roseanne Barr) decides to get even. This Hollywood adaptation of a British novel looks like it was directed by Danny DeVito; it has the same kind of mean-spirited humor that he loves. Its message is not exactly subtle and it’s impossible to believe in these characters; they’re drawn in very broad strokes. The cast makes it worth your time though, with Barr as the ugly duckling, Begley, Jr. as the slimy husband and Streep as the pink man-eater who gets a taste of her own medicine.
1989-U.S. 99 min. Color. Directed byĀ Susan Seidelman. Novel: Fay Weldon (“The Life and Loves of a She-Devil”). Cast: Meryl Streep (Mary Fisher), Roseanne Barr (Ruth Patchett), Ed Begley, Jr. (Bob Patchett), Linda Hunt, Sylvia Miles, Elizabeth Peters.
Trivia: The novel was also turned into a British miniseries, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986).
