Ruth (Roseanne Barr) tries to be a good wife and mother but it's hard when she isn't appreciated. Bob (Ed Begley, Jr.) is an upwardly mobile accountant embarrassed by her frumpy appearance and gauche manners, so when he gets a chance to hitch his star (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) to beautiful glamorous romance novelist Mary Fisher (Meryl Streep), he abandons Ruth with the children. Ruth has had enough, however, and she is not about to take this betrayal laying down.
The defense would like to call its first witness: the gender politics are not that bad, considering when this was made. Yes, the movie relishes the fall of Streep's Barbie-like character more than Bob's but it's not like he gets off scot-free, and she kind of has a redemption arc from being a home-wrecker.
"But Roseanne Barr!" I know. It was 1989. I can't fucking change that. Just like I can't change the fat-shaming inherent in the film. I will say that Ruth's "glow up" remains firmly in the realm of achievable and realistic. She doesn't have a drastic makeover, she just looks like herself with better grooming and wardrobe. (There's a whole separate gushing conversation about Mary Fisher's transformation, but I don't have time to get into it because I have shit to do today.)
Is this movie a little dumb, a little (very) silly, and hugely dated? Yes. But I love it and I don't care. It's streaming for free with ads on Tubi, the Roku Channel, and PlutoTV.
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