The First Wives Club

Three college school-chums are reunited by the dramatic suicide of the fourth in their original circle of friends. Having lost touch with each other, they initially believe that they have grown apart - but soon discover a shared common problem: their first husbands.

A few bottles of wine later, and the scheme is hatched. The three of them form the First Wives Club of the title, with the primary aim of ruining the men who used them to get to the top and subsequently dumped them in favour of younger, more pert, women. Look out guys! Here comes Goldie Hawn's Wrath! Hmmm.

Let's face it, it is a delicious idea - and the women set about 'getting everything' and leaving their inconsiderate men in ruins. What's even more fun is seeing the three wonderful actresses play out this situation on the screen, each utlizing their own inimitable comic style. Hawn is ditzy and kooky - there's no other word for it - Midler is brash, mildy offensive but doggedly determined, and the lovely Keaton is frothily neurotic or neurotically frothy ... whichever way you want to look at it.

Occasionally slipping into farce (with the side-splitting window-cleaner's thingy scene, in which the ladies plummet down the side of a tower block, pausing only so that Hawn can be told how great she looks by an astonished couple in bed) this movie does, however, have something to say. Thankfully, it never lets that get in the way of a corker of a gag. My single hang-up: how odd it is when the amiable threesome burst into a choreographed song and dance number in coordinated clothing for the finale. Why? WHY!?

Mark Chamber