I get it, I’m a guy and this movie wasn’t made for me. I am nowhere near the target demo for this
kind of comedy, so if I tell you that “The Other Woman” is a rancid,
misogynist, unstructured, belly-ache of a mess it can only mean that I just
didn’t ‘get’ it, right? Wrong! These kinds of high-concept rom-coms come out
every year between the weeks that are programmed full of comic-book action
movies, and I sympathize with the girlfriend audience who can’t bear to see
another chase scene, another mid-flight battle or another building explode, but
girls, I promise, you deserve better than this.
Carly
(Cameron Diaz) has finally met ‘the one’ in Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a handsome,
successful CEO who seems ready to commit but whose scheduling is a little
erratic. After bailing on a dinner to meet the father, Carly decides to
surprise her new lover in sexy plumber garb but is surprised to meet his wife
Kate (Leslie Mann) when she answers the door.
Instead of instant hysteria or angry phone calls made, Kate decides to
slowly gain the trust and friendship of her husband’s mistress and together
they decide to travel the scenic route to his eventual takedown.
Like
many other pandering romantic comedies, aiming to lull the lowest common
denominator into submission with poop jokes and slapsticky sit-com gags, this
movie wants women to believe that the message of this retaliation plot is empowering,
when in actuality it is doing very much the opposite. Mann and Diaz are putting it all out there for
the jokes and Mann especially sacrifices all sympathy for every contrivance
this movie puts her pathetic character through. Despite knowing that her husband
is a cheating with multiple women, embezzling from other companies with her
signature, and even spreading STD’s, she still has to be convinced and reminded
of his horribleness up to the very last 10 minutes. All the while, Diaz’s
strong lawyer character gets over the heartbreak of losing Kate’s husband by
eventually seducing her impossibly attractive brother. But hey, it’s okay, because girl power!
Essentially,
“The Other Woman” plays like an evenly-lit, wealth-obsessed, PG-13 version of a
rape-revenge exploitation film like “I Spit on Your Grave.” And like those kinds of reprehensible movies,
the women in this story have to be humiliated throughout the picture to finally
earn their moment of payback, while at the same time furthering the beliefs that
liberated or not, they still need men for sex, money and social position. Never
mind the fact that whatever tension exists in the plot, only exists because we’re
supposed to believe that everyone involved in this silly caper, including the
brothers and fathers of the interested parties, agree to not spill the beans to
this clueless dope of a husband. To fill time between this nonsense, director
Nick Cassavetes—oh how far the acorn falls—lets the movie drift into baggy
montages of bikini-beach partying and lazy, girl-bonding time-lapses.
Is it
funny? Sometimes Mann’s physical performance and Diaz’s straightly delivered
pep-talks generate a giggle or a desperate-for-anything chuckle, but the
organic chemistry between these women is undercut by headache inducing, comedy
set-piece clichés involving laxatives, spying in bushes with binoculars, and
people falling out of windows. And of course, when we finally arrive at the overhyped
moment of comeuppance, it’s treated with as much grace and as much plausibility
as a Scooby Doo unmasking with Roadrunner violence. Make no mistake about it ladies;
this toxic, cynical movie hates you.
Grade: D -
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2014
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