Before the advance press screening of “The Stepford Wives” in Kansas City, members of Ron McGee’s Late Night Theatre troupe performed a number from their musical of the same name. The company of female impersonators donned sun hats and sundresses while pushing around shopping carts during a lip-synched homage to the grocery scene from the original 1975 movie.

What is most surprising is that when the new film began to roll, it was just as campy as McGee’s drag queens.

Nearly three decades after the mildly eerie horror flick became part of pop culture, “The Stepford Wives” remake has taken the material in a wholly different direction. Director Frank Oz and screenwriter Paul Rudnick turn the story into a comedy that satirizes modern male/female relationships. The result is a film that constantly teeters between masterpiece and fiasco.

Nicole Kidman stars as Joanna, a “castrating Manhattan bitch” who has become a top television executive in charge of sordid reality programming. When a crime occurs that is linked to the unveiling of her fall season schedule, the network decides to cut her loose rather than weather the lawsuits.

Her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) believes it to be good therapy for her to get away from the high pressure world of New York, so they move to the wealthy, gated community of Stepford, Conn.

Aside from a renowned author (Bette Midler) and a gay architect (Roger Bart), Joanna has trouble connecting with any of the other folks in Stepford — especially the wives. The women possess great beauty but seem as subservient and emotionally vapid as the high-tech appliances that come equipped in the town’s luxurious houses.

They “look like Betty Crocker at Betty Ford,” Roger comments.

Meanwhile, Walter is fitting in fine at the Stepford Men’s Assn., which is like a cross between the Playboy Mansion and a Microsoft programmers lounge. The reclusive haven is presided over by Mike (Christopher Walken) and his June Cleaver-like wife Claire (Glenn Close).

When Joanna’s marriage begins to collapse and her close friends start acting “funny,” she uncovers the sinister secrets behind Stepford.

Although the names, setting and general premise still hail from Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, the intent of this updating is not at all the same. No one will charge the filmmakers with lazily churning out a robotic sequel.

Unfortunately, the basic story is still structured like a horror-thriller and the film desperately craves this element. Whenever the plot veers off into an area that generates tension — like when Kidman and Midler first spy on the Stepford Men’s Assn. — the situation is defused through humor. Even the central “reveal” (empty eye sockets and all) is done as a way to get laughs rather than scares.

It’s a credit to all those involved that the jokes work as well as they do. This IS quite a funny cast — especially Walken, Midler and frumpy Jon Lovitz, whose much-publicized nude scene was mercifully left on the cutting-room floor.

Also good are the little throwaway visual gags, such as showing the parking lot at the men’s club filled only with vehicles like Harleys, Porsches and “Starsky & Hutch”-painted Gran Torinos — all cars that wives normally would be appalled that their husbands had purchased.

But the film’s finale simply doesn’t hold together. The concluding 10 minutes consists of nothing but characters making explanations, with one twist after another hurled at the audience.

At this point, the picture becomes so tricky that its basic logic falls apart. Early on there are several scenes that dramatically demonstrate the mechanical qualities of the women (e.g. the automated teller), but the ending dismisses this fact with a secondary explanation that harpoons the whole premise.

It’s all inserted in order to bypass the downer quality of the original film with a peppy comeuppance more worthy of a “Married With Children” episode.

Perhaps Oz and Rudnick (the pair responsible for “In & Out”) were specifically trying to turn “The Stepford Wives” into a camp classic. But camp doesn’t happen on purpose; it typically has to be by accident. What’s left is an often audacious movie that is just too serious about being campy.

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