Glasskey-1
I don't know if they were going for laughs when they made this movie, but man, they sure got them. I suppose the humor is unintentional, but I laughed nevertheless. First of all, Donna Mills' husband, Michael Ontkean, is such an obnoxious jerk in the beginning, you find yourself actually kind of hoping he gets replaced by a robot. Bouncing a filthy basketball off the freshly painted interior wall of your new house is not something that men do, it's something that schmucks do.Meanwhile, the husbands in town who have been Stepford-ized engage in such creepy, horrific behavior as not being slobs, not insulting their wives, and not knowing the play-by-play score of a basketball game. Scary! As it turns out, the husbands are not being replaced by robots, but instead are being shipped to a clinic where they get pumped full of drugs that make them docile and suggestible. A reprehensible thing to do to a person, for sure, but not as bad as being murdered and replaced by a robot.Here's a typical scene from this movie: Michael Ontkean: Hey man, you want to shoot some one-on-one while our wives are putting dinner on the table? Stepford Husband: Nah, I'd better help her set the table.Cut back to Michael Ontkean, recoiling in disgust and dread.Anyway, Michael Ontkean gets shipped off to The Clinic and comes back an actually pretty decent guy, albeit one who has to take about 50 pills a day. At one point, Michael Ontkean starts coming on to his wife, but she's not in the mood, so he says, "that's okay, we'll just cuddle." The look of absolute horror and repulsion that comes over Donna Mills' face after he says that is hilarious.Eventually, Donna Mills tires of her new-and-improved husband, and secretly replaces his dozens of psychotropic medications with lookalike vitamins. At this point, the audience learns that Donna Mills' character is borderline retarded, and only she is surprised when she consults an out-of-town doctor about taking her husband off his meds cold turkey, and the doctor practically screams, "are you crazy? Taking someone off all these powerful, psychotropic medicines could cause a psychotic break!" So Donna Mills heads back home and meekly sneaks in through the front door to find her furniture slashed to shreds, cabinets and shelves overturned, and broken glass all over the floor. Again proving that she has an IQ in the low double digits, Donna Mills' character does not turn and run out of the house, but rather continues further into the house, sweetly cooing, "honey, are you all right?" Uh, what do you think, lady? Sure enough, Michael Ontkean comes around the corner looking like a homicidal maniac screaming "what did you do to me?!" All the while, Donna Mills is apologizing and trying to convince him not to bash her head in with a baseball bat. Somehow she succeeds and promises to take him to a real doctor, but just then Cindy Williams and her fellow Stepfordians burst in and drag Michael Ontkean away to be reprogrammed. Donna Mills quickly makes the even-more-retarded Cindy Williams believe that she's totally on board with it, and knocks Cindy senseless when she turns her back. Donna Mills gets to the clinic, saves her husband, and they hightail it out of Stepford once and for all.I guess the overriding theme of this movie is that men, in their natural state, are immature, obnoxious louses and that any attempt to civilize their behavior is unnatural and abhorrent. In other words, men who help their wives set the table, instead of keeping their eyes glued to a basketball game with their buts solidly attached to the couch, are a sort of abomination. Is this really the only way the writers could have approached this story? I guess I'd be offended if the movie weren't a laugh riot.
Aussie Stud
Donna Mills once again proves why she is the ultimate queen of made-for-television camp trash mini-classics. Hot off the heels from her long-running role on "KNOTS LANDING" and a string of generic forgettable garbage "Lifetime Television for Women" movies like "RUNAWAY FATHER", "IN MY DAUGHTER'S NAME" and "MY NAME IS KATE", Mills hams it up in this forgettable low budget re-telling of "THE STEPFORD WIVES" with a new spin on it... that this time, it's the poor husbands who get the "STEPFORD" makeover!Mills and made-for-television male counter-part Michael Ontkean play husband and wife who move to a lily-white perfect town where Mills is talked into signing her 'too-busy' author husband up for a series of sinister experiments run by none other than Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher(!) in a career-low performance as an evil scientist determined to turn men into perfect mates for their poor put-upon wives!Being a 'made-for-television' movie, "STEPFORD HUSBANDS" can't afford to delve into a story-line involving "robotic" husbands, thus the cheap explanation that the men can only be changed by administering a drug.
Shirley Feeney-Meaney, uh I mean Ms. Cindy Williams befriends Mills, coaxing her on with the experiments while poor Ontkean slowly morphs into a boring passionless husband of no feelings or personality with a penchant for bad acting!Camp moments include Louise Fletcher viewing live feeds from security footage as Donna Mills haplessly runs down a hallway and in and out of various rooms like a Bugs Bunny classic searching for her husband while being chased by Fletcher's henchmen, Cindy Williams getting it in the face with a frying pan and Fletcher being "administered" a syringe containing a lethal dose by her backstabbing assistant!This made-for-television trash is so bad, you'll have no other choice but to enjoy it! Or watch simply for Louise Fletcher's over-the-top performance as a sinister scientist who will stop at nothing to create the perfect man!My Rating - 1 out of 10
barry-107
Anything with Donna Mills is worth a few hours. Sure, the story is lame, but then, how many stories in the movies these days are either solid or original? Sometimes we just have to have a light, entertaining movie without any deeper meaning. Look at Mission Impossibles!
John-405
Not as believable or relevant as the first, with wooden acting and a finale that suggests the writer just got bored and did his best to wrap it up quickly so he could go to lunch. The "turnabout is fair play" tactic could have been handled intelligently, but this is not that movie. For die-hard stepford fans only. For others, stick to the original and the "revenge" sequel.
