Remakes are usually disappointing, but if we were to make a top of the most disappointing ones, well, “The Women” would make it in the Top 5.

Originally written as a play for Broadway by Clare Boothe Luce in 1936, “The Women” was three years later made into a film by George Cukor. Cukor kept the film’s plot, but changed a bit the atmosphere and the character’s lines, to make it a little less malicious.

Actually, Luce was very much criticized in her times, for being a woman-hater and portraying women as beasts competing against one another. Cukor did not fall in this trap, taming his characters.

But writer director Diane English cut all the snappy lines from the film’s 2008 version, turning it into a cheesy and silly chick flick, full of clichés. All genuine nastiness was removed, leaving the characters dull and boring. No teeth, no claws. Solving problems through shopping. Sad.

Basically, the movie is about the happy life of Mary Haines, played by Meg Ryan, who is completely shocked and messed up when she finds out her husband is cheating on her with an attractive sales lady. Mary did not expect this, and did not suspect anything, as she was busy devoting herself to work, family, cooking and gardening. Unfortunately, her multiple activities don’t help her too much when it comes to gaining money, so she is financially dependent of her cheating stockbroker husband. Of course, all her friends, played by Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith, team up to find a solution to this problem.

English seems determined to deal with all the problems specific to a female’s world, so the film ends up loaded with clichés: childbirth, cosmetic surgery, female friendships, women who betray one another, career women who neglect their children, men who can’t accept successful women, teenage girls concerned about their looks.

To add more clichés, all characters are well categorized, each having her own little shelf to sit on: Sylvie Fowler (Bening), Mary’s best friend, is a career woman, Alex Fisher (Pinkett Smith), who in the original film was a spinster, is lesbian, while Edie Cohen (Messing) is a supermom who is continually pregnant. These three find out about the infidelity of Mary’s husband before the naive gardener does, and they cannot easily decide whether to tell her and then what to advise her after she finds out the truth.

And, strange as it may seem, English spent 14 years to shape this project. And she spent so much time to make it politically correct and nice that she lost all the fun in it.

“The Women” is rated PG-13 for sex-related material, language, some drug use and brief smoking.