THE FIRST WIVES CLUB

• Starring Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton
• Directed by Hugh Wilson
• Rated ; running time 102 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 6

(Sept. 19, 1996) -- The pure star power of Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton counter much that is wrong with The First Wives Club. They make the film more entertaining than it has any right to be, but nowhere near as effervescent or intelligent as it could have been.

In this adaptation of Olivia Goldsmith's novel, Hawn, Midler and Keaton play three well-to-do, middle-aged Manhattan women who have been mistreated and ditched by their husbands. Spurred on by the suicide of a fourth friend -- another jilted wife -- the trio pledge to work together to get revenge (or justice, depending on your point of view).

Diane Keaton plays Annie, the mousiest and most accepting of the three women; she's trying to work through her domestic problems in therapy. She knows her husband (Stephen Collins) is having an affair, but is deluded enough to think he'll come home. But when she discovers her analyst (Marcia Gay Harden) is The Other Woman, Annie decides to fight back.

Bette Midler is Brenda, the frumpy but spirited wife of a Crazy Eddie-styled electronics store magnate (Dan Hedaya). He dumps her for a sexy airhead (Sarah Jessica Parker).

The standout of the three, though, is Goldie Hawn as Elise, a movie star who is losing the battle against middle age despite having nearly as much plastic surgery as Michael Jackson. It's not bad enough that they're beginning to cast her in mother roles, her producer-husband (Victor Garber) has ditched her for an eager teenager (Elizabeth Berkley, late of the notorious Showgirls).

In her most fertile role since Private Benjamin, Hawn clearly relishes skewering Hollywood attitudes about aging. Her best moment: Demanding that her surgeon (Rob Reiner) pump up her lips until they're as thick as "Jagger's."

The First Wives Club has been adapted for the screen by writer Robert Harling, whose previous creations -- the Steel Magnolias -- also were women who bonded to combat their problems.

The First Wives script gives each of its three stars moments to shine, though Hawn and Keaton seem to have more than the under-used Midler. One-liners and physical comedy abound -- the film falls far short of the sophistication to be found in several earlier Hollywood stabs at similar material, from The Women in the '30s to the more recent 9 to 5.

Director Hugh Wilson comes to the project with modest TV credentials and the dubious achievement of having created the original Police Academy film. Thus we probably shouldn't be surprised that The First Wives Club lacks a cohesive flow; it unspools more like a contrived collection of sketches, a three-ring circus of domestic turmoil.

Maybe that's why we're not prepared when the movie takes itself seriously in the final reel -- nothing we've seen before hints that these women will demonstrate such a profound social conscience.

Still, The First Wives Club undeniably supplies laughs -- including several that are quite robust. Audiences with modest expectations will have a good time, and there's even a chance many women will embrace The First Wives Club as a sort of middle-aged, white-bread version of Waiting to Exhale.

Both films are badly flawed, but both still manage to strike a nerve.