Oz fails in several ways. One is that aside from a gag about Connecticut, another about AOL, and a few about Jews and gays, the comedy is flat as a fallen cake baked from any of a number of Stepford wives, sitcomish at best. More important, though, the satire is both toothless and free-floating, the references tepid, the barbs unfocused. Are we meant to protest against the rage of the upper-middle classes for plastic perfection, replacing the very human traits of fallibility and the screed against living large with huge houses, a new car or two in every garage and grocery carts filled to the ceiling? Or is this, like the 1975 version, yet another gasp by men who have still not accepted basic feminist beliefs, pigs who are threatened because their women make more money, have more powerful and prestigious jobs, and even play tennis better while the guys have to settle for the slow-moving (and to my mind irritating) strokes of the golf course? Is this more a parody of the recent phenomenon of TV reality shows? Or does Oz want to emphasize the evils of rampant technology? By diffusing the targets, Oz fails to hit any square in the bulls-eye.

Nicole Kidman performs as Joanna Eberhard, a razzle-dazzle TV executive whose reality show ruins the life of a nice guy from Omaha (Mike White), thereby finding herself out of a job and in the midst of a nervous breakdown. To relieve the tension, her husband, Walter Kresby (Matthew Broderick), moves his wife and family to the quiet suburb of Stepford CT and joins the men's club where the smug guys wear fraternity-style uniforms, smoke cigars and drink bourbon, and express their satisfaction at having wives who are unendingly pliant. Walter is introduced by his new buddies to the method behind the town's madness, and soon Joanna catches on to the fact that the only woman who acts normal is the sloppy and hence human Bobbi Markowitz (Bette Midler).

Not only is the satire muddled: we get mixed messages about who these pliant women are. Have the men killed their wives and modeled new creations using the women's features, or, as the picture indicates on another level, have the men simply implanted the women with microchips in order radically to change their behavior?

There are solid performances from Christopher Walken whose name, Mike, turns out to be a nickname for Microsoft, from Glenn Close as the town's rah-rah cheerleader, and from Bette blonde women and their cigar-chomping men. The picture is brief, the plot moves quickly. But confusion about its central focus has likely been responsible for a reworking by the crew as recently as month before the opening as transitional scenes appear to have been left on the cutting room floor leaving a conclusion as tepid as its attempted satire.