Real Monster in Law

A huge percentage of movies seem to actively hate women. Consider romantic comedies pitched to women, like Bride Wars, I Hate Valentine’s Day, previous Forgotbuster Failure To Launch, and today’s Forgotbuster, Monster-In-Law. All of them seem as iffy about the value of women as deliberately ugly movies like Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. This seems counterintuitive. Wouldn’t it make sense, from a commercial perspective, to flatter a film’s intended audience, rather than insulting them? Yet audiences seem to have a strangely boundless appetite for romantic comedies about horrible women being horrible to each other, generally over some empty suit of a man.

Monster-In-Law, 2005’s 23rd highest-grossing film, is a particularly egregious case, because it marks the cinematic return of Jane Fonda, one of the preeminent feminist voices of the past century, following a big-screen absence of 15 years. A fierce force like Fonda starring in a movie with gender politics this regressive, particularly after such a long absence, is like Gloria Steinem starting her own Lingerie Football League, in collaboration with Hooters.

Monster-In-Law casts Fonda as Viola Fields, a veteran newswoman with the impressive career of Diane Sawyer and the ethics and morality of Cruella De Vil. Viola has the misfortune of being a woman of a certain age in a culture that worships youth, and in the television business, which doubles down on that worship. So when she learns she’s about to be replaced by what appears to be a 20-year-old intern who just graduated from cheerleading academy, Viola snaps. Reduced to interviewing a Britney Spears surrogate (they were strangely ubiquitous in movies and TV around the time) who says she doesn’t support Roe V. Wade because she thinks boxing is too violent (a one-liner that would make Bruce Vilanch groan), Viola yells, then physically assaults the 16-year-old on television.

The prominent reference to Roe V. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion, somehow makes everything that follows even worse. It’s as if the filmmakers are letting us know that they know all about feminist history, feminist theory, and just plain feminism (how could they not, with Fonda as their star?), yet choose to depict women as conniving shrews all the same.

After a long, restful stay in a sanitarium of some sort, Viola re-enters society to a horrifying discovery: While she wasn’t paying attention, her hunky son, Dr. Kevin Fields (Michael Vartan), whose hobbies include jogging on the beach in slow motion and disappearing from the film for long stretches, has fallen in love with a simple commoner. Jennifer Lopez plays Charlie, the woman Kevin falls for. The film tips the scales ever so slightly in her favor by making her the nicest person in the world, in addition to being breathtakingly beautiful. In Monster-In-Law, Charlie is a human rainbow who delights everyone around her with her extreme kindness and ebullient personality.