This movie has been a childhood favorite of mine. I guess of how much it played on Lifetime. Although I've seen this countless times, it has come to my astonishment that this movie was actually based on a British novel, which spawned a mini-series back in 1986. The novel and mini-series are much darker in tone, contrasting to this version's more lighter, softer approach.
Now before I go on, I would like to make a disclaimer:
I know many of you heard the controversies surrounding Roseanne. Although she is known for her outspoken, unapologetic nature, my mom and I actually admired her. When we watched her tv show, It felt so real as if it spoke to us somehow. And dare I say it, Roseanne was one of those people I found fascinating as a kid. You don't have to "like" her, that's not the point of the conversation, I'm just saying there was a reason why she was so popular back in her day. There weren't that many female comedians who broke the mold back in the '80s, which of course lead her to star in this film.
Then we have the legendary Meryl Streep in her first-ever comedic role and she is quite good and I found her enjoyable. It would've been a plus if she was nominated for a golden globe but I'll save my roses for her later because there is a lot to talk about when it comes to Meryl Streep's performance but now I want to get into the whole meat of the story.
Let's start by explaining the plot. It starts like this: Ruth is a frumpy, homely housewife who feels neglected by her husband Bob (Bobbo in the novel and the miniseries) who happens to have an affair with best-selling romance novelist Mary Fisher.
After having a terrible family dinner with her in-laws, causing Bob to leave off with Mary Fisher, Ruth plans her revenge on both of them.
This is where I talk about both the 1989 movie and the 1986 miniseries that came before it. Many of the elements have changed and most of the scenes left out from the novel can be seen in the 1986 version which is a more faithful adaptation.
Ruth, played by both Roseanne and Julie T. Wallace, starts off as a clumsy, abnormally tall housewife who feels unloved, always slaving herself doing the chores, and looking after the children as her husband carouses around in his office and second apartment. She goes over the edge once her husband reveals to her about his affair with Mary Fisher and suggests they have an open marriage, which means a marriage of convenience. Ruth soon unleashes her bottled up emotions while preparing dinner for her in-laws, embarrassing Bob in the process. In a fit of rage, he says how inadequate she is compared to Mary Fisher, his prim, perfect, fashionably elegant, thin AND short mistress. This is Ruth's boiling point. She writes down a list where she plans her revenge on Mary Fisher; she'll save Bobbo for later. This includes her career, her establishment, her looks, and, most specifically, her life.
In the BBC version, let's just say that Ruth is ruthless at her attempts at ruining Mary Fisher's life. The journey to get there takes much longer. This all happens in a span of seven to eight years! Yeesh! That takes a lot of commitment. What makes this entertaining is that she goes through various disguises and even gets to seduce a few men along the way. Not only that, she actually studies accounting to screw over her husband's bank assets and fundings to his private account to claim as her own, making HER wealthy. This soon goes into a greater plan, which I will discuss later into the review.
Further down the line, she is able to pose as a nurse in order to release Mary Fisher's rambunctious mother from a retirement home, befriends a female nurse from a psych ward to collaborate on building a business for unemployed women, seduces the judge handling Bob's case, coaxing him to sentence Bob for seven years, seduce a catholic priest to mess with Mary Fisher's mental state just in time to meet her final goal.
Julie T. Wallace was intimidating as Ruth yet she's easy to root for at the same time by conveying the hurt and turmoil of the character, vying for her revenge and power. This version of Ruth doesn't' take things lightly and there's even an indication that she hates her domestic life as she wiling abandons her own children to reconstruct the life that she wants. She's more obsessed with Mary Fisher. Fascinated by her glamourous life where she constantly buys her romance novels as escapism. But that admiration soon turns to hate as Ruth does anything she can to destroy Mary Fisher's paradise. Like I said the BBC version is really, really dark and plays out more like a melodrama.
Let's cut to the 1989 movie. Ruth is still homely but has more a motherly, softer shape instead of the abnormally tall, amazonian appearance she has in both the novel and 1986 version. It makes sense that Roseanne was cast in the role because at the time she was dubbed "The Domestic Goddess" because of her comedic tales of her mundane life as a lower-middle-class matriarch, which parallels to Ruth's less glamourous life as a suburban housewife. I would say that Roseanne is having the time of her life and is very much different from her role as everybody's favorite fishwife Rosanne Connor.
She gets to play a woman who embodies her own power and uses it for destruction and reconstruction as she becomes the voice for women all across New York City. Ruth is less of the hard-edged anti-hero and is played more comedically to where her act of revenge is much more slapsticky and mischevious. For example, instead of seducing a male judge, she recruits one of her Vesta Rose employees to assign a female judge in place of a male judge for Bob's case, which I thought was clever. There's even a scene where she does cry and misses her children, showing her soft side. Also at the beginning of the film, she is way too concerned about the standards of beauty and how she would look next to her tall, blond, handsome husband. But as she builds a business of her own, makes new friends along the way, and pretty much becomes a trailblazer for women in the workforce, she finally accepts herself and becomes beautiful in her own right.
For a movie that came out thirty years ago, that is awe-inspiring to me.
Now let's get to Mary Fisher, the object of Ruth's obsession.
As a romance novelist, Mary often thinks of herself as one of her lovestruck heroines, bouncing from lover to lover, including her manservant Garcia, and lives at The Hightower by The Sea. She is everything that Ruth isn't. She has her own career, which she built on her own, she's rich, she's elegant, and most of all, she's beautiful, thin, AND short. This makes Ruth very resentful of her and by the time Bob leaves off into her Hightower by the Sea, the destruction of Mary Fisher begins.
In both the novel and the BBC miniseries with actress Patricia Hodge in the role of Mary Fisher, throughout her troubles, Mary is a bit passive, just letting things happen without taking any control. Her mom reveals everything about her, including her real age and first marriage, Garcia, her manservant, seems disinterested in her, then she is forced to play stepmother to her lover's kids, her book sales dwindling, and she tries to become a born-again catholic, but then that fails once she has an affair with the priest who's consulting her. Which seems to be her final downfall. Patricia Hodge was good at challenging the vulnerability of the character but still was able to solidify Mary's dignity through her crumbling self-importance. The circumstances surrounding Mary Fisher is pretty tragic. She is a woman who lives in this golden, glittery facade, only to have her foundation shattered; leaving her in a hopeless state.
This plays out differently in the 1989 version.
First of all, Let's talk about Meryl Streep's amazing performance.
She is hilarious as Mary Fisher, playing a woman who thinks she has it together but doesn't, and, for a second there, Meryl actually makes the character a bit sympathetic. But, at the same time, there is a pivotal point in the movie where she actually fights to take control of her life.
Patricia Hodge sort of portrays the character in this wispy, lovelorn way and pretty much in the role of damsel in distress when she really doesn't have to be, which in turn affects her writing skills.
Meryl Streep, however, portrays Mary realistically right off the bat. When things get pushed too far, she puts her foot down.
She shuts her mother up, holds down the kids with an iron fist, fires Garcia, and shows Bob who's boss once he's caught cheating. This version gains points for me because the filmmakers were able to make Mary a more progressive character. Even though she's experiencing what Ruth went through, drowning into the bowels of domestic life with an unfaithful lover to the point of affecting her writing abilities, it shows that she's had enough with the bullshit and as a woman of the 80s, who would blame her?
Last but not least, we have Bob, the unfaithful philander. It shows that he is unsatisfied with his marriage. Not particularly happy in his gated suburban home with his homely wife. He is often the man who wants excitement, danger, a thrill to spice up his libido.
He thought he found his match in the glamorous, sophisticated Mary Fisher, but when it comes to Bob and beautiful women, he's like a kid in a candy store.
Although Bob is still a jerk in the 1989 movie, it's more so played for laughs. However, in the 1986 BBC series, he is rather emotionally abusive towards Ruth. He sort of gaslights her into having an "open" marriage and says right to her face that he sees her more as a friend, even though, he's married to her. It's no secret that he'd only married Ruth because of an unexpected pregnancy. Fed up with her constant clumsiness and inadequacy, he leaves her for Mary Fisher. Therefore, this leads to Ruth to uncover some secrets about Bob while on her revenge plot. It just so happens that Bob, who owns his own accounting firm, steals from his clients. This happens around the time where Bob is getting kind of bored of Mary Fisher and their sex life isn't what it use to be, so he does what he does best.
That's when Ruth is able to recruit a sexy, young secretary through the Vesta Rose employment agency in order to entice Bob. This is where it gets Bob in trouble to where Ruth coaxes the young woman to declare her love to him when the affair goes too deep. Once he figures out what he has gotten himself into, he fires her, claiming that she seduced him. Fetching.
This leaves the young woman full of tears and anguish. So as a way to make it up to her, Ruth helps her out by drawing out half a billion dollars from his clients' account to his "Switzerland" account making them rich, which then gets Bob arrested for fraud. In the BBC series, Bob is sentenced to seven years while in the 1989 movie, Bob is sentenced to eighteen months, which I think is pretty tame for somebody who committed fraud. In the BBC series, the downfall of Bob is quite tragic.
Dennis Waterman as Bob was actually perfectly cast as we see the seven years of depression and loneliness that Bob suffers through, making him downtrodden and pitiful, even though it's impossible to feel sorry for him.
Ed Begley Jr., on the other hand, is much more bumbling with his approach of Bob. It plays out it in a way for the audience to not outright despise him, but rather laugh at his misfortunes instead.
Anywho, when it comes to Bob, he embodies the reputation of a man who lives by his own rules, but in the end, it bites him in the ass HARD.
In terms of the writing, I thought the novel and BBC series was much better in regard. It plays out like a series of misadventures involving Ruth and I found that exciting. Just to see her portraying these different characters and switch out identities while running into various people, changing their lives and changing who they are, is quite fascinating to watch. The novel and BBC series also have a bit of magical realism to it when it comes to Ruth's she-devil powers, to which her plan works perfectly in her favor.
This, of course, is going to lead to spoilers. So, ladies and gents, before I go deep into this review, I advise you to either read the novel, watch the BBC series on either Youtube or find on home media, or you can watch the 1989 version, which is available on Amazon Prime.
*spoilers*
So it turns out that Ruth's grand scheme is to become...Mary Fisher herself! Yes, I said it. She gets Bob put in jail for seven years so she can buy enough time to get multiple surgeries to mold herself into the ideal woman she wants to be. Meanwhile, the real Mary Fisher wethers away, dying from cancer. As the old Mary Fisher dies, Ruth takes her place as the new Mary, taking over her Hightower by the Sea, her manservant Garcia, and even Bob once he's released from jail, putting him through sexual torture.
I wasn't lying when I said the original source material was dark.
But the 1989 movie takes a different route.
Once it's revealed that Bob not only cheated on her but stole millions from her and her friends, Mary Fisher breaks up with him and fires him. And I'm just so glad that she's able to come to her senses and say, 'you're not only out of the job but you're out of this relationship, too.' In this version, it shows that Mary's life was good before she met Bob, therefore, leading her to find that solace again, and, as a reward, she becomes a better writer for it. So instead of the bad experiences literally killing her, it humbles her, wherein the end she is open to new love.
And instead of Ruth going through great lengths to become Mary Fisher, she learns to accept herself, to where now, she becomes a leader in the workforce.
The final image of Roseanne walking down the streets with her Vesta Rose clients trailing behind her had always been ingrained in my mind. Truly, truly, awe-inspiring.
I definitely recommend both versions. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil is like watching a really addictive prime time soap while 1989 She-Devil is a hilarious comedy about the clash of two very different women. There are both good in their own right and does a great job at feminist storytelling, especially at the highlight of 'girls can do anything' era.
My last word for both adaptations: A Must See!
