Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman), a wildly successful president of a TV Network, after a series of shocking events suffers a nervous breakdown and is moved by her milquetoast of a husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick), from Manhattan to the chic, upper-class and very modern planned community of Stepford, Connecticut.

Once there, she makes good friends with the acerbic Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler), a Jewish writer who’s also a recovering alcoholic. Together they find out, much to their growing stupor and-then horror, that all the housewives in town are strangely blissful, and somehow... doomed.

What is going on behind the closed doors of the Stepford Men’s Association and the Stepford Day Spa? Why is everything perfect here? Will it be too late for Joanna and Bobbie when they finally find out?