First Wives Club, The

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's a glamorous revenge romp, a "9 to 5" mixed with "Auntie Mame," and it gives each star the opportunity to do her best work in a long, long time.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The movie, from the 1992 best seller by Olivia Goldsmith, isn't deathless art. But as pure entertainment, this witty revenge romp is sinfully satisfying.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

And thanks to great existential one-liners from scriptwriter Robert Harling (with appropriate plaudits to novelist Olivia Goldsmith, of course), gender warfare is made amusing for almost everyone.

Variety Leonard Klady

The familiar setup sparkles a little brighter here thanks to the ensemble and their deft delivery of the bitchy dialogue in Robert Harling's adaptation of the Olivia Goldsmith novel.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The dialogue is often silly but Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn deliver it with enough crackerjack energy to keep audiences laughing.

San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser

It's funnier, and bitchier, than Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women," and, best of all, it showcases three wonderful actresses who have rarely been better.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

The film is played as witchy, all-star vamping with a lethal sting. What makes its premise especially funny is that, at heart, it's no laughing matter.

Chicago Reader Anthony Puccinelli

On one level, The First Wives Club is a snappy satire, well written by Robert Harling (also the author of "Steel Magnolias"--another vehicle for women).

Newsweek David Ansen

We're here for catty one-liners, movie-star camaraderie and fur-flying vengeance, and, in spite of a regrettable wimpiness that creeps in toward the end, that's what we get.

TV Guide Staff(not credited)

Yes, it's great that Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler -- all women of a certain age, though they've done their best to make sure no one's certain what it is -- get to carry a major motion picture, playing college chums reunited by the perfidy of men.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Yet with so much going for it, the film's creators have made the classic Hollywood choice and treated its actresses like flesh-and-blood special effects. If you've got talent like this, or so the theory goes, a coherent story is a luxury that can be dispensed with.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The First Wives Club has all the conviction a comedy of female vengeance needs. But as soon as the dumb plot takes over, the wit leaks out of the movie like helium from a balloon.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There is undoubtedly a movie to be made about this material -- a different movie.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

But as badly as the younger women in The First Wives Club are treated, none of the three central characters, with whom we're supposed to identify so strongly, comes off that well either.

USA Today Mike Clark

The First Wives Club has a femme casting coup for the ages, and sometimes it only takes the right performers interacting to give sprightly fluff indispensable showmanship. [20 Sep 1996 Pg.01.D]

The New Yorker Bruce Diones

The director, Hugh Wilson, aims for harmless froth, and what he winds up with, as the hysteria level rises, is something brash and strident.

Empire Deborah Brown

But what starts out so promisingly with some witty one-liners loses itself in the middle and finally descends into a slapstick routine that cries out for a touch of sophistication.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

It's difficult to say who is more misguided here: the men (director, screenwriter and producer) who made the movie, or the women who signed on to play the parts.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Unfortunately, although there are a few nasty thorns here and there, The First Wives Club is a largely uninspired (and unfunny) comedy that collapses completely in the final fifteen minutes.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

For all their sass, brass and bewitchery, the starring troika can't breathe life into these characters, much less transform them from women scorned into hellbent furies.

Austin Chronicle Alison Macor

As a satire this film would be hilarious, but writer Robert Harling's ("Soapdish") script doesn't quite hit the mark.