Ira Levin’s novel, The Stepford Wives, adapted to film in 1975 and again in 2004, marries comedy with the grotesque. That satire gives the book and its underlying feminism their power. The films miss this point in opposite ways. The ‘75 version downplays the humor, ignoring the absurdity of the novel’s premise, and the ‘04 version plays everything for laughs, seeming to mock the novel’s feminism.