Norma Shearer, an almost infuriatingly sane and even-keeled actress, is once again typecast as the Voice of Good Reason. Here, she's an upscale wife and mother who finds out that her husband is having an affair and leaves him; her girlfriends surround her for support, but they're going through their own marital woes. Catty, brightly chatty screen-adaptation of Claire Booth's celebrated play is well-cast with energetic actresses and never bows to soapy melodrama; yet, when all is revealed, it's rather tame and good-girly. The color fashion show sequence inserted into this otherwise black-and-white film really says it all: the picture is less about relationships than it is about how fabulous each woman looks. Remade with music (and men) as "The Opposite Sex". **1/2 from ****
Review of The Women
