46 Thoughts I Had While Rewatching ‘The First Wives Club’

There is little in this world that I love more than a revenge movie, whether it’s Uma Thurman coming for Bill in the aptly titled Kill Bill, Carey Mulligan elaborately giving creepy guys a taste of what they’re owed in Promising Young Woman, or a ragtag group of high school girls ganging up on their douchebag ex in John Tucker Must Die. Arguably one of the best in the genre, though—the ur-revenge movie, if you will—is the 1996 classic The First Wives Club, starring Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and the almighty Bette Midler. Let’s revisit it, shall we?

1. It’s graduation day at Middlebury College in 1969 (nice), and four coeds with simply enormous hairstyles are getting ready to walk.
2. Damn, the actor playing young Bette Midler is absolutely perfect.
3. Some not-small number of years later, one of the women is all grown up and has become Stockard Channing. She, uh, has a cocktail, smokes a cig, and throws herself off a balcony?
4. Why would you name a dog Roachie?
5. Diane Keaton has a lesbian daughter. Hell yeah.
6. Finally, a queer character who understands the importance of coming out for maximum dramatic effect: “Mom, I’m a lesbian. But don’t tell Daddy! I want to wait for a good time, like Father’s Day or Christmas morning.”
7. God, Goldie Hawn really sounds just like her daughter.
8. “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney, or Driving Miss Daisy,” says Goldie Hawn, which…true.
9. Were all teenage Jewish boys in the ’90s named Jason?
10. “Don’t shame me in the synagogue,” Bette Midler tells her bar mitzvah boy, who’s refusing to study his Torah portion. LOL.
11. Everyone finds out Stockard Channing is dead, and the three ex–best friends reunite—not entirely happily—at the funeral.
12. Everybody’s husbands left them! What a world!
13. Is there anything more ’90s than a marriage falling apart because the wife won’t go Rollerblading?
14. “Lesbians are great nowadays,” Diane Keaton brightly tells her friends of her daughter. You said it!
15. LOL, I forgot that Diane Keaton’s hot therapist is played by Marcia Gay Harden.
16. Victor Garber, Goldie Hawn’s evil ex-husband, wants her to pay him alimony 🙁
17. OMG, SJP!
18. I’m sorry, Timothy Olyphant is in this movie? How old is Timothy Olyphant?
19. Okay, I looked it up. 53?!?!!??
20. God, this is fucking sad: Bette Midler has pictures of fat women on her fridge, I guess to inspire her not to eat? Eat what you want, queen!
21. Goldie Hawn is all bent out of shape about being asked to play a mother in a movie. It’s giving Jenna Maroney.
22. Bette Midler eats alone at a fancy restaurant and seems sad about it, which I don’t get because that’s clearly the pinnacle of the human experience.
23. Diane Keaton and her ex hook up, after which he promptly tells her he wants a divorce, to which she screams, “But we just made LOVE!!!!!!” Go get ’em, girl.
24. Oh naur, Diane Keaton’s ex is sleeping with Marcia Gay Harden. You hate to see it.
25. This movie apparently features six Oscar winners?
26. The girls get a posthumous note from Stockard Channing 🙁
27. And just like that, the girls form a plan to hit all their exes where it really hurts 🙂 🙂 🙂
28. I love a plan that unfolds at a lesbian bar.
29. I would give literally anything to be at this ’90s lesbian bar, sipping a weak gin and tonic and flirting right now.
30. OMG, Lea DeLaria!
31. Bette Midler finds a sad, also-dumped lesbian at the bar, and they hang out.
32. Diane Keaton’s lesbian daughter is, unsurprisingly, happy to help take down her dad and “those other lowlives.” The girls always come through!
33. The only thing I love more than a plan that unfolds at a lesbian bar is a plan that keeps unfolding at a bar mitzvah.
34. Oh, hell yeah, Italian-mob involvement.
35. Not SJP wearing a mink to a simcha!
36. Goldie Hawn cleans out an old loft, and then the girls build a clubhouse. Damn, I want to blackmail my ex-husband.
37. A cool, rich, older grande dame helps the girls out, since she’s a first (and second and third) wife herself. She invites SJP over for salad and sets her up with Bette Midler’s decorator friend, who creates a ruse to help the girls prove Bette Midler’s ex-husband is a financial fraud.
38. I am very stressed out by this scene of the girls falling down the side of a building in a window washers’ lift that can’t possibly realistically support them.
39. Whatever, they’re fine.
40. Time for my literal favorite scene: the girls singing and dancing to Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” Iconic!
41. Then there’s a whole thing with an auction, which sends Bette Midler’s ex over the edge about how much money SJP spends.
42. “All I want is a lifestyle!” yells SJP—a line that will echo in my head for years to come.
43. Big fight! Three-way slap!
44. I have to say, Diane Keaton’s lesbian daughter was very early to the cartilage-piercing trend.
45. Boom! The men are handled! The women dig up dirt on each of them and gather them together to…fund a women’s crisis center in honor of Stockard Channing. Aw, that’s nice.
46. All the girlies are glowing up! There’s an unfortunate Ivana Trump cameo and then a reprise of “You Don’t Own Me.” Perfect movie.

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