Ruth is a wife and mother who tries to please her husband (Bob) but finds him pulling away and spending more time at the office than at home. When he begins an affair with a famous romance novelist (Mary) and leaves Ruth to raise their kids, she decides she's had enough of playing nice docile housewife. Ruth endeavors to show Bob and Mary the truth about themselves and each other, while creating a new successful life of her own.
Written by
Mia Holder
Plot Synopsis:
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Ruth Patchett (Roseanne Barr) lives in the suburbs outside New York City with her husband Bob (Ed Begley, Jr.) and her children Nicolette and Andy (Elisabeth Peters and Bryan Larkin). She is a competent and loving homemaker but her skills are often pushed aside by the fact that she is extremely clumsy, unattractive, and overweight.

Bob works as an accountant in New York City and takes Ruth to a party at the Guggenheim Museum, to "network." At the party Ruth spills her wine on romance novelist Mary Fisher (Meryl Streep), much to Bob's embarrassment. Before Ruth can return with Bob's stain-fighting prescription of salt and Perrier however, Bob has already offered to drive Mary home, and she lives more than two hours away from the Patchett's home. Bob drops Ruth off at the curb in front of the entrance to their street, leaving her to walk home.

Upon arrival to Mary's "palace on the sea," she invites Bob in. However, the butler Garcia (A Martinez) has been waiting up for Mary all night, and is clearly displeased when he is sent straight to bed by Mary. In her office, Bob and Mary's "business meeting" quickly turns intimate and Bob spends the night.

Upon arrival home the next morning in the middle of breakfast, Bob announces that he has landed Mary Fisher's account. Ruth becomes suspicious that Bob is having an affair, and begins to try to please him by doing extra chores around the house, such as cutting the grass and fixing the sink, and trying to look more attractive, going so far as to shave her unsightly mustache.

Bob's affair continues, and Mary becomes annoyed when she must share him with Ruth; and Ruth, now sure of the nature of Bob's late nights at the office, approaches him. Bob responds that Ruth is his best friend, that his business with Mary is purely business related, and that he wouldn't hurt her, but warns her not to "start" as his parents are coming over for dinner.

The dinner does not go according to plan. Bob spends another long day at the "office" and can't help Ruth cook. As a result, food is already coming out charred to a crisp and the appetizer of clam puffs has to be changed to cheese and crackers, which are also nearly spilled onto the floor when Ruth trips. The mushroom soup, which she had made just for Bob, as it is one of his favorite dishes, is revealed to hold Andy's missing gerbil when the lid is removed from the dish.

A firefight ensues. Bob calls Ruth an incompetent homemaker and a lousy cook, and reveals to the kids that he only married her because she was already pregnant. Ruth storms out, and tells him that if he wants dinner, he can have Mary Fisher cook it for him. Bob's parents have had enough, and storm out--of the house.

Bob moves out later in the night permanently, insulting Ruth all the way out the door. He tells her that he has four assets he holds dear: His house, his family, his career, and his freedom to enjoy them. When it comes to liabilities, he exclaims he only has one: Ruth herself. He calls her a 'She-Devil' and leaves.

Ruth is enraged. She writes down his assets and vows to check them off one by one. She starts with the house, destroying it by starting a fire. She throws a live hanging lighting fixture, a clothing iron, and all of her books by Mary Fisher, which she had once enjoyed to read, into the washing machine. She turns on Nicolette's hairdryer, places it on the bed and covers it in pillows, overloads a single electrical outlet with nearly ten appliances, jams a food blender with a knife, throws a lit cigarette into the wastebasket, blows out the pilot light to the stove--with the gas still running, and places several aerosol cans into the microwave. She takes a picture of her family, the list of Bob's assets, the dog, and her lipstick, and makes it out of the house just in time for it to erupt in flames. Already she has an asset to knock off the list.

Having nowhere to live herself, she drops the kids off at Mary's place to stay with their father, conveniently just as Bob and Mary share an intimate moment in the swimming pool. Bob protests, but Ruth outruns him in a taxi.

Ruth starts a new life under a new name, Vesta Rose, inspired by a woman selling roses on the street, and heads to where Mary's estranged mother Mrs. Fisher (Sylvia Miles) lives, the Golden Twilight Nursing Home. Under her new identity, she secures a job as an orderly under the home's owner Mrs. Trumper (Mary Louise Wilson), and Nurse Hooper (Linda Hunt), only to discover that the home's residents are drugged nearly to the point of coma. Ruth decides it's time to wake them up, and switches the home's sedatives with plain vitamins.

After the change Ruth starts a soccer league, which the old residents play out on the lawn still dressed in their housecoats and slippers. Hooper is irate, but decides that she won't tell Trumper when Ruth appeals to her and tells her that all women like themselves should stick together. Now alert, Ruth gets to know Mrs. Fisher, who turns out to be a chirpy and wisecracking old woman who does not speak favorably about her daughter. She talks Mrs. Fisher into visiting Mary, and puts her on the train herself.

Meanwhile at Mary's, it is revealed Mary is inept to handle any task related to motherhood, and this is compounded by the fact that the kids don't listen to anything she says anyways. Nicolette sits on the lawn blasting the radio and talking on the phone all day, while Andy watches TV in the living room while Bob is still seen flirting with still more women. Furthermore, Mary's beloved toy poodle is killed when Andy throws a stick off the back edge of her property and the dog follows it into the rocky sea below. Mary begins to reach her breaking point when she is forced to do the unthinkable--laundry. The maid Ute (Susan Willis) is busy cleaning after the ever growing mess and the butler refuses to do anything but lounge in the swimming pool in protest of not being Mary's front line man. Mary, having never used a washing machine before, ruins all of Nicolette and Andy's clothes, pouring an indiscriminate amount of bleach directly on the clothes before starting the washer.

Dinner is now shown at Mary's house with her mother over. Mary's hatred toward her mother is clearly shown--she doesn't even invite her to dinner, Mrs. Fisher discovers it herself and directs herself to a seat. On top of this, Mrs. Fisher reveals that Mary is not age 34 as she had claimed, but actually 41.

Ruth and Hooper are enjoying lunch when Ruth breaks out her specialty--rich cakes and desserts. Hooper can't help but taste more and more, never having had a sweet in years. She warms up to Ruth and tells her that she has over $55,000 in the bank, as she has next to no expenses and has been working the nursing home for decades. Ruth exclaims that money has no value if it's not put to use, but leaves when Hooper reluctantly decides not to leave the home.

Her mind is quickly changed however when Ruth is fired from her job. Incontinence is strictly forbidden at the Golden Twilight home, and Trumper discovers a big wet spot where Ruth had dumped Mrs. Fisher's bedpan into the bed and Ruth does not deny hiding the spot. Mrs. Fisher is not long welcome in the Golden Twilight home, securing her a permanent spot at Mary's crumbling palace by the sea (just as Ruth had planned). Ruth boards a bus toward New York City, and nearly leaves without Hooper who catches the bus at just the last second by chasing it nearly down the street.

Meanwhile, Mary seems to be getting a burst in confidence when a journalist from People magazine comes to interview her. Mary is sidetracked from her new tea-time snack of Yoohoo and aerosol cheese by a phone call, and Mrs. Fisher quickly takes advantage of the situation to be interviewed and drops a bombshell--Mary was a "teenage tramp" who would do it "anywhere, anytime, and with anyone" and gave birth to a son that was fathered by a butcher when she was 16. The "heir" to the Fisher dynasty was adopted by another family, however. Ruth can cross of Bob's family from the list.

Ruth and Hooper move to New York City where they move into a small apartment together as roommates, and using Hopper's money, they buy a run-down building in the World Trade Center district to open an employment agency for women like Ruth herself. Through much advertisement, the agency is packed on its very first day in business, despite the office still going through renovation. Ruth begins to form her own "army" of women, getting them jobs as data processors, bank tellers, and court reporters all over the city. One of her clients is the very young, and very attractive Olivia Honey (Maria Pitillo). Ruth, disguising her voice, and using a special ad just for Bob, gets Olivia a job at Bob's new office right in the World Trade Center. She becomes his next fling. But when "Bobby" won't get more serious with her, she asks Ruth for advice. She tells Ruth that his wife is a "real nut" who left him with the kids and that his current living arraignment is working out so great. Ruth tells Olivia she needs to speak her heart, that she loves Bob. Bob promptly fires Olivia, but not before she has gained unprecedented access to his financial information, and reveals to Ruth that he skims the interest off his clients accounts and wires it to a bank in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, Mary publishes her next book, "Love in the Rinse Cycle", which promptly flops in sales and criticism. What's worse is that the new People article has been published, and it's a blistering tell-all. Mary begins to lose control, crying all day and taking copious amounts of anxiety medication to the point of collapsing spread out in bed.

Ruth and Olivia plan a midnight Rendez-vous and sneak into Bob's office transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars into Bob's private overseas bank account in order to make more of the embezzlement charges they plan to file against him. With Olivia distracted, Ruth filters through Bob's files, and finds photocopies of Olivia's butt on the copy machine with Bob pinching them, while wearing the special ring Mary gave him engraved with his initials. The angered Ruth sends this letter to Mary under the disguise of a fan letter. This combined with the fact that the maid has quit makes Mary completely lose it, and when she finds Nicolette getting romantic with Garcia and Andy drinking with her mother, she puts her foot down, and declares herself boss, "Starting now!"

Ruth, now having sufficient evidence to accuse Bob of his fraud, she annymously calls the IRS and reports the crime.

Still tense in the house, Mary throws a party to revitalize herself, but it comes to a grinding halt when detectives come to arrest Bob.

After a meeting with an expensive attorney who revealed that not only will Bob's case be heard before a judge very lax toward white collar criminals, but that most of the stolen money came from Mary's account (which was the result of Ruth and Olivia's computer hacking). Mary wants Bob out, and fires him and tells him that their relationship is over... for good.

Ruth contacts one of her many soldiers, a court clerk (Lori Tan Chinn), and asks if the judge can be changed to one more impartial. Grateful for Ruth's services, the now-clerk readily agrees and pulls strings to get "Judge Brown" to hear Bob's case now, instead of the lenient Judge Phillips.

Bob's case is heard where the unbias, but unsymathetic Judge Brown, a female African-American judge, does not take any pity on him, nor buys his contraditing "computer glitch" defense to the embezzlement charges against him. Judge Brown finds him guilty of embezzling money, and sentenences him to pay a large fine and serve a minimum of 18 months in prison. Catching a glimpse of Ruth on his way out of the courtroom for the first time in months, Bob begs her to help him, but she has no sympathy. Ruth can now cross off "career" and "freedom" off her list, putting an end to her reign of terror. "Poor Bob", Ruth says in a voice-over. "I almost felt sorry for him... almost."

The film then flashes forward to one year later. Ruth is visiting Bob in prison with the kids. She drops the kids off but before she can leave, Bob asks her if he can come over one night and cook her dinner when he gets out in another six or seven months. Ruth tells him that would be nice, and that she'll think about it. Bob asks Nichollete and Andy to taste some cookies he made in the prison kitchen and they burned, echoing Ruth's burned clam puffs.

After the events with Bob, Mary sells her mansion. Her new book is called "Trust and Betrayal: A Docu-novel of Love, Money and Skepticism," proves to be a critical and commercial success; Ruth appears at the book signing and asks the autograph to be made out to "Ruth", which causes Mary to give a momentary lapse of deja vu (considering that she never actually met Ruth face-to-face throughout the movie), but she shrugs it off. Next in line after Ruth is a handsome Frenchman whom Mary flirts with, showing that she is back to her old ways.

In the closing shot, Ruth is shown walking down the street in the World Trade Center neighborhood, wearing current styles and her hair nicely done, surrounded by women wearing the Vesta Rose agency pin they received upon joining Ruth's "army." Breaking the fourth wall, Ruth looks at the camera and smiles... seemingly satisfied with the sweet revenge she devilishly duked out on Bob and Mary's faces.

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