The First Wives Club
Tags: revenge, cult, satire

Plot synopsis:
At Middlebury College in 1969, four young friends, Annie MacDuggan, Elise Elliot, Brenda Morelli, and Cynthia Swann, are graduating. As graduation gifts, valedictorian Cynthia presents the girls with matching Bulgari pearl necklaces. As the graduates take a commemorative picture of the four of them (presumably for the last time), Cynthia makes Annie, Brenda and Elise promise that they will always be there for each other throughout the remainder of their lives.
In the present time, the four friends eventually lose touch with one another, as evident when Cynthia (Stockard Channing) is tearfully gazing at the picture of the four of them on that graduation day. Now wealthy and living in a luxurious penthouse, she gives her maid her own Bulgari pearl necklace (matching the three she gave to her friends on graduation day), and has the maid mail letters to them. She later walks outside of the balcony of her penthouse in a floor length fur coat, a cigarette and a drink, and then commits suicide by jumping to her death after learning through the tabloids that her ex-husband Gil (whom Cynthia made wealthy through her connections, according to narrator Annie) married his much younger mistress the day before.
Her former friends aren't doing much better: Annie (Diane Keaton), meanwhile, is separated, suffering extreme self-esteem issues, and going through therapy with her husband. Brenda (Bette Midler) is divorced, left for a younger woman, depressed, and struggling financially. Elise (Goldie Hawn), whose husband also left her for a younger woman, is now an aging alcoholic movie actress who has become a plastic-surgery addict to keep her career afloat. Shortly after Cynthia's funeral, at which the three remaining friends are reunited for the first time since college, Annie's husband, Aaron (Stephen Collins), leaves her for her younger therapist (Marcia Gay Harden) and asks her for a divorce after spending a night together (and leading Annie to believe it would reconcile them); Brenda has a rather unpleasant encounter at a clothing store with her ex, Morty (Dan Hedaya) and his younger and rather hateful mistress Shelly (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Elise finds out that her soon-to be ex-husband, Bill (Victor Garber), is requesting alimony and half of their marital assets claiming that Elise owes her fame to him. Also, during a meeting with a director for a possible leading lady movie role, she discovers that she is only to play the lead female's mother; she later learns the lead female is Bill's current girlfriend. Shortly thereafter, the three friends receive the letters that Cynthia mailed to them before her suicide. After each one reads her letter from Cynthia, and feeling that they have been taken for granted by their husbands, the women decide to create the First Wives Club, aiming to get revenge on their exes. Annie's lesbian daughter Chris (Jennifer Dundas) also gets in on the plan by asking for a job at her father's advertising agency so she can supply her mother with inside information, as payback for Aaron's unfairness toward Annie.
Brenda finds out through her uncle Carmine (Philip Bosco) who has Mafia connections that Morty is guilty of income tax fraud, while Annie makes a plan to revive her advertising career and buy out Aaron's partners. However, as their plan moves through, things start to fall apart when they find out that Bill has no checkered past and nothing for them to use against him. Elise, feeling sorry for herself, gets drunk which only results in her and Brenda hurling vicious insults at each other, and the women drift apart. When Annie starts thinking about closing down the First Wives Club, her friends come back, saying that they want to see this to the end and Bill hasn't done anything blatantly wrong, but only as far as he knows. As a result, the wives manage to uncover information revealing that Bill's mistress (Elizabeth Berkley) is actually a minor.
Deciding that revenge would make them no better than their husbands, they instead use these situations to push their men into funding the establishment of a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding abused women, in memory of their college friend Cynthia. The film ends with a celebration at the new Cynthia Swann Griffin Crisis Center for Women. Annie narrates that Elise started a relationship with a cast member in her new, successful play, that Brenda and Morty reconciled their differences and got back together, and that when Aaron tried to get back together with her, Annie told him to "drop dead". While outside the center Bill meets Shelly and the two start to flirt. The film concludes with the three women joyfully singing Lesley Gore's hit "You Don't Own Me". This sequence was choreographed by Patricia Birch and her assistant choreographer was Jonathan Cerullo.

Review: Like Nine to Five, First Wives Club purports to be making a statement - albeit in comedy mode - about a serious feminist issue, but like that movie is simply an opportunity to portray women getting back at men who have taken advantage of them - and why not?!
While the film may have little practical application to the majority of women who are "traded in" for newer models, but whose men are not as well heeled as the husbands in this film, it does provide them with 100 minutes of escapist entertainment from three great American actresses - OK Bette Midler may not be the best actress in the world but she's certainly hugely entertaining.
The women in First Wives Club seemed clever and delightfully devious, whereas the women in Waiting to Exhale seemed to prefer to sit around discussing how evil men are and plotting bits of petty revenge that showed how superior they are, not to mention setting fire to their husbands' property.
This is the story of three former college girlfriends (Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler) who are reunited after many years due to the suicide of a mutual friend (Stockard Channing) and all learn that they have been dumped by their husbands for younger women.
There are funny bits contributed along the way by Rob Reiner as Hawn's plastic surgeon, Sarah Jessica Parker as Hedaya's mistress, Maggie Smith as a wealthy divorcée, Bronson Pinchot as a faux designer, Eileen Heckart as Keaton's mother, and Marcia Gay Harden as Collins'therapist/mistress.
A wonderful script is smartly mounted by director Hugh Wilson with an energetic cast to produce a terrific film comedy which can easily be watched several times and discover new pleasures on each viewing..
I think that the major reason that the movie is unappreciated by too many critics is because it's a "woman's picture." It's designed to be a very light comedy that brings in women and their families to generate box office.
The sets are great, the costumes are perfect and the acting is really funny and also touching when it needs to be, such as when Sarah Jessica Parker says to Bette Midler, "Brenda, this outfit might look really good on you...
The 3 college friends are Elise Elliot (Goldie Hawn), Brenda Cushman (Bette Midler) and Annie Paradis (Diane Keaton).
With the 3 protagonists feeling disgruntled about the way they've been treated, they decide to set up the First Wives Club and take revenge on their cheating husbands;Whilst, the film is rather slow to get moving, I did find that this to be an enjoyable film.
I felt that Goldie Hawn gave the stand out performance, but that's not to discredit Midler and Keaton who were also fantastic.What really impressed me about the First Wives Club was the ending (which I won't give away), but let's just say that there was slightly more to it than meets the eye.All in all, this was a fun ride with plenty of laughs.
Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Stockard Channing have been friends for years and all have something in common - cheating, flaky husbands.
These forty-something ladies replaced by younger models aren't going to take their fate lying down, and what a hoot it is watching them set up their outfit to take fickle men to the cleaners.OK, the film is a little sexist, with a one-dimensional view of both men and women; but it succeeds as entertainment.
This movie is just great fun from beginning to end in that it is one big drama after another that just seems exaggerated, but again that's what makes the film.
Now it is why only the cast make this movie so well that it fails at other times, being pretentious and completely unaccommodating, but if you give it the chance The First Wives Club might surprise you on how well it manages to be a very warming and fun watch for anyone who knows how to handle it.
The three are Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler -- three absolutely wonderful actresses.
The novel involves much deeper issues, like a father taking money from his retarded daughter, a man who beat his wife and forced her to allow their daughter to die following an accident, a man who refuses to support his children, et cetera.This movie focuses on petty revenge because they are not happy with being discarded for twenty year olds.
And also being asked to admire the boys." As noted, the center of this film is the relationship between three women (Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and Diane Keaton) whose husbands each leave them for younger women, which in the context of this film is the unpardonable sin.
You would have to be a die-hard fan of either Goldie Hawn, Bette Middler or Diane Keaton to be able to sit through this 'comedy' to the end.
I saw the film purely by accident a couple of years ago on a plane when I was travelling to Hong Kong and this was shown on screen.The First Wives Club is mainly based on a book- of which I am not that familiar with- and is a very anti-male take on 3 women who get together and plan their revenge against their hubby's, after they mistreat them.
The script was poor, the performances were below-par given the standard of the three female leads, Midler, Hawn and Keaton and for a film supposedly trying to promote gender equality it fails because it portrays the male characters as sleazy, money grabbing chauvinists.This comedy movie is also so devoid of actual laughs, the wisecracks were typically old-fashioned, sexist and the narrative derivative- and this coming from a woman.
But with movies such as The First Wives Club, they are misleading and wrongly perpetuate the notion that all women are great and all men are heartless, scheming, cheating, lying toe rags.Such a shame that with a stellar cast in Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler, the film sends itself up to be male-bashing farce, as opposed to one that highlights the positives and negatives of both men and women through these characters and addressing the argument of the battle of the sexes, in a open minded and fair way that doesn't make all women out to be the good guys and the men the so-called bad guys.The ending was a bit of a farce because the men end up going back to their girlfriends and wives, despite their behaviour and going out with other women that Hawn, Midler and Keaton take them back.Whilst this will not rank in my top ten worst movies ever list- i've seen much worst in my time- this ultimately is a flawed movie which to be honest, having seen it once, I have no intention of ever seeing it again.
And in the closing shot we see the three women sing and dance in the middle of an empty street, which is a true low-point in corniness.Diane Keaton, one of my favorite actors, has been making a lot of bad movies these days.
I must say that I am usually a fan of Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler - a bit less so of Diane Keaton - and the premise of First Wives Club certainly looked promising for clever comedy.
But I decided to watch it anyway (I mean, why not) as it starred Diane Keaton, who played in about half of the best movies of the 70's.
But oh well, let's focus on the story for now.Annie (Keaton) Brenda (Bette Midler) and Elise (Goldie Hawn) are three women in their mid-forties who are left by their men for younger women.
If you look at it this way it seems like it could have some fun (though for women in particular), but this movie takes a couple of (very) wrong turns.As I said, the movie begins with a suicide of a person we don't meet in the entire movie.
I'm always curious after seeing a movie that doesn't work how the investors feel when they see the first cut (if the producers invite them to...)  I'd be inclined to cut my losses and say, "OK it's going to cost too much to try and make this a funny film, just release it as it is."   Maybe this is exactly what happened..
A goofy comedy designed as a star vehicle for its three leading ladies, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler.Is it a good movie?
Goldie Hawn alone is enough to watch it, her character was hilarious.Many of the other actors were great and I love Bronson Pichett in all of his roles, this was his dullest and most unfunny role I have seen, but it worked.
If you watch "The First Wives Club" because you need a good laugh, perhaps you should try another film.
So, the three friends (Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn) concoct a plan--a plan that involves fleecing their unfaithful ex-husbands and creating a club for wives going through the same sort of situations they have.As I said, there are some dark moments and some funny ones.
The three leading ladies, Goldie, Bette, and Diane have amazing chemistry, the supporting cast is superb as well, and the movie overall is great!
If you ever need a light chick flickey comedy that's actually good, definitely see this!My favorite character = Brenda (Bette Midler) she is hysterical as ever!
In this girl power movie, Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton give great performances as three middle aged who woman seek revenge on their husbands after being traded in for younger models.With that "girls rule!" vibe, three of Hollywood's greatest leading ladies, and some truly hilarious moments, The First Wives Club is definitely one for the girls.
It's thoroughly entertaining and I'm sure every female in the world can relate to it in one way or another.Seeing as it's truly a girls feel good movie, it probably won't amuse men at all, in fact, they may even find it offensive, but grab a load of your girls friends and watch it for a good laugh on a girls night in..
The First Wives Club is a great comedy movie about three middle-aged women who get dumped by there husbands for younger women.
The angry wives, who were the ones who got there husbands where they are today, are of course very angry and set out a very successful and cunning plan to get revenge on there exes.This movie features such a brilliant cast with the likes of the brilliant, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, Elizabeth Berkley, Sarah Jessica Parker and Stockard Channing all starring here.The First Wives Club is a brilliant, fun, comedy movie which is just  great all the way through.
Not that i'm generalizing here, but I think this movie is great if you have been wronged by a man in any way similar to these women.
While this movie doesn't follow the book much -- it is still very good.Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and (the ever underutilized) Diane Keaton are hilarious as three woman that rekindle their college friendship at the funeral of a mutual friend.The dialogue is witty, fast paced and brutal.I wouldn't want to be the enemy of any one of them.This film is an absolute cameo heaven -- everyone under the stars has at least one good line -- from Ivana Trump to Rob Reiner to Kathie Lee Gifford -- everyone gets a chance to knock off a funny line.Using the well-known lesbian comedian, Lea DeLaria, as the woman trying to pick up famous actress Elise Eliot Atchinson (Goldie Hawn) in the gay bar is a stroke of casting genius -- and then having Brenda Morelli Chushman (Bette Midler) grab Elise and announce "SHE'S WITH ME" was the perfect touch.I thoroughly enjoyed this film..
No joke.It was nice to see Keaton, Midler, and Hawn in a very energetic film, but the script wasn't that funny.
A real feel good movie when their ex husbands get their just desserts.Goldie Hawn is in a role she is best for doing a diva actress who isn't afraid of making fun of herself.
This movie proves that Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton are the top of the top for comedic actors.
I think the way Brenda (Bette Midler), Elise (Goldie Hawn), and Annie (Diane Keaton) got back at their husbands was pretty clever.
If you ask me, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton singing "You Don't Own Me" was hilarious.
Also, I thought that they looked really beautiful as well when they sang "You Don't Own Me." In conclusion, if you're a fan of Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, or Diane Keaton, and you haven't seen THE FIRST WIVES CLUB, I recommend it.
The short cameo appearance of Stockard Channing as she takes leave of this life after being dumped by her husband for a younger model galvanizes three of her friends Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton to take some action other than sit on their alimony which can be a sometimes thing.Belaboring the obvious what they all have in common is that they were all first wives, veterans of marriage who get dumped by their husbands going into midlife crisis.
The First Wives Club is open to any women who feel they've been put through the ringer in their divorces, don't just get mad, get more than even.Goldie Hawn is an aging actress who goes through all kinds of makeup and plastic surgery just to stay young.
Having Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton together for a picture should guarantee that the film is going to be something special, and it is, a witty, breezy comedy about women getting even with their philandering spouses.
The First Wives ClubThe upside to being a man's first wife is that you get to enjoy pre-Viagra sex with him.However, that's no consolation for the ditched dames in this comedy.Brenda (Bette Midler), Elise (Goldie Hawn) and Annie (Diane Keaton) commiserate over their college friend's (Stockard Channing) recent suicide.Suffering from failed marriages themselves, and fearing a similar fate to their friend, the women decide to form a club and get revenge on their insignificant others (Dan Hedaya, Victor Garber, Stephen Collins) and their mistresses (Sarah Jessica Parker, Marcia Gay Harden, Elizabeth Berkley).With help from a socialite (Maggie Smith), they also hope to turn their husbands cruelty into a woman's charity.By not having the characters rely on a Prince Charming to save them, or implausible theatrics to redeem them, this ditzy comedy empowers women to strive for more.However, the wealthiest women still belong to the Last Wives Club.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca.
As a child of divorce who watched her father move on to another woman and leave his family to flounder while he prospered, I totally understand the need of the women to make their husbands understand the damage they've done.The First Wives Club is a feel good movie that entertains and motivates you to rise above your problems to do good for others..
The victims of chauvinist husbands who dumped them for younger women, middle-aged friends Brenda Cushman (Bette Midler), Elise Elliot (Goldie Hawn) and Annie Paradis (Diane Keaton) decide to take revenge.
First Wive's Club (1996) Dir: Hugh Wilson Co-starring with heavy-hitters Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler, Keaton plays one of three recently divorced women who make a pact to get back at their good for nothing, skirt chasing, cradle robbing ex-hubbies.
Pretty watchable chick flick starring Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton.
Here's the premise: after the suicide of a close college friend (Stockard Channing), three ex-wives (played by Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton) maneuver the destruction of their ex-husbands' careers and lives.
(For Christ's sake ladies, let this film be an example, learn early that all men are good for nothing!) Oddly enough, Diane Keaton's on-screen daughter is the happiest person in the film, not to mention the least dysfunctional, and she's a lesbian!The whole movie comes off like a cross between 9 To 5 and The War Of the Roses, though nowhere near as sick and deranged as the latter - The First Wives Club points out everything in light-hearted raillery.
Bette Midler is excellent as Brenda, the wife of an electronics-emporium magnate, and Goldie Hawn, as good as always, plays Elise Elliot, an aging movie-star who can't get any roles -- an important issue in Hollywood right now (key word being `Hollywood').
) and then goes nuts.The movie is filled with hysterical women shouting and screaming, hell ( forgive me my foul language ) this could have been subtitled 'Scream 4 ' but there are some things I like about 'The First Wives Club': as a person who spends a lot of her time trying to watch all of Victor Garber's movies, I thought he was just great as Bill.
The leads (Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and a weakly-used Diane Keaton) are likable, but their characters are not based in reality.
I ended up without much sympathy for any of the characters.Acting talents of Goldie Hawn, Bette Middler, Diane Keaton, and Stockard Channing, whose character jumps to her death off her patio when her husband becomes her ex in the first scene, were wasted on this film.
Diane Keaton wears the same exact thing once again, and Goldie Hawn had to use part of her real life in a movie character.
Thank you to Goldie, Bette, and Diane for making this wonderful movie and showing us women that we can be strong and independant..
Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and Diane Keaton, college pals, have been brought together by the death of one of their group, who committed suicide (nice comic start, huh?) when her husband ditched her.
Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler all turn in hilariously on-target performances of middle-aged Manhattan elite crushed by the husbands who left them for younger models.