Joanna Eberhart has come to the quaint little town of Stepford, Connecticut with her family, but soon discovers there lies a sinister truth in the all too perfect behavior of the female residents.
I can imagine similar material being directed by, say, Woody Allen, and coming out pointed and funny. Instead, director Bryan Forbes gets all solemn and spooky and goes for obvious effects like bolts of lightning and forbidding Gothic mansions.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
23 Oct 2004
rotten:
The humor that remains in the movie is preesnted with such facetiousness one almost feels embarrassed to watch. You want to tell the actors to take it easy, since it's apparent that Bryan Forbes, the film's director, didn't.
– Vincent Canby,
New York Times,
9 May 2005
rotten:
William Goldman's leisurely script and Forbes' dull direction never quite capture the subtleties of Ira Levin's novel about an idyllic Connecticut commuter village where the housewives are a bunch of domesticated dummies.
– Derek Adams,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
rotten:
Overlong and underdeveloped, this flimsy Bryan Forbes horror story (1975) would probably have made a decent television movie; but on the big screen and stretched to nearly two hours, it sags badly.