The Other Woman

Man, did this movie frustrate and irritate me to no end.  Is The Other Woman as unwatchable as A Haunted House 2?  Fortunately, no.  But, it's bad in a completely different kind of way.  It's a cinematic dead zone from which no joy can escape from within it, and completely wastes the talents of two gifted comic actresses, Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann.

I lay the blame for the film completely at the feet of the idiotic screenplay by first-time writer, Melissa K. Stack.  It doesn't have a shred of originality or wit behind it.  It's also another one of those disposable movies that depicts supposedly successful middle aged women as shrieking and obnoxious morons who can't walk without tripping over themselves, or falling into something as a result of some tired pratfall.  The humor plays at the lowest possible level.  It starts at dog poop jokes, and works its way up to a scene where a guy violates a toilet with a fury of the brown stuff, as extremely loud and exaggerated fart and poop sound effects blast on the theater speakers.  Is this really the best script that these talented actresses could find?  Sadly, knowing the state of recent comedies, I'm going to say yes. 

The plot: Cameron Diaz plays a successful New York lawyer named Carly Whitten.  Because she's a successful New York lawyer, she hardly has to do any work in the office, and gets to spend most of her time talking to her secretary (Nicki Manaj) about her new boyfriend, and give her all the details on her sex life.  That boyfriend would be Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a lying sleaze who has been wooing Carly for the past eight weeks, but hasn't told her he has a wife back home.  His poor wife, Kate (Leslie Mann), doesn't know about his affair either, and is blissfully ignorant until Carly tries to pay a sexy visit at the man's home to make up after she had a brief argument with him.  Carly and Kate quickly both realize that the man they love has been playing them, and form a friendship in order to mend their broken hearts.  As the two women try to figure out what to do, they learn that he has yet another woman that he's been sleeping around with.  Eventually that third woman joins up in their little group also.

This third woman would be Amber, and she's played by swimsuit model Kate Upton.  This is not Miss Upton's first movie role, but it is her first leading role in a film.  How is she up against veterans like Diaz and Mann?  Well, I don't really want to judge her based on this, because the movie literally forgets to give her a character to play.  She has the least amount of dialogue of the three leads, and the screenplay cannot be bothered to give her a personality or character traits.  It's as thankless of a role as I have ever seen.  There are moments where the movie seems to be telling us that she's supposed to be "the dumb one" of the three, such as the scene where they're spying on Mark, and she briefly looks through the wrong end of the binoculars.  Honestly, you could replace her performance with a cardboard cutout of Kate Upton, and the audience probably wouldn't be able to notice.

That's not to say that Diaz and Mann get to play rich or developed characters here.  To be honest, these are probably some of the worst comic performances I've seen both of them give.  Mann, in particular, comes across as shrieking and annoying, instead of the sympathetic character she's supposed to be.  The movie seems to think it's funny to constantly have her go through nervous breakdowns, where she wails, cries and rolls around on the floor, as she contemplates throwing herself out the window to her death when she learns her husband is cheating on her.  They even give her character a massive dog, just so that she can be dragged around by the giant animal through some of her scenes for no reason other than the movie is under the mistaken assumption that the image is funny.  Diaz often comes across as shrill and unlikable here.  We're supposed to get behind these women as they bond together and take revenge on the man who wronged them.  Problem is, I didn't like any of these women separately, and I hated them even more when they teamed up.

The Other Woman is bad in so many ways.  I hated how it made its three female stars into clueless, oblivious morons until the script allowed them to get a hint.  For example, the movie never explains how these women never knew that Mark was cheating on all of them, when he frequently flirts and picks up other women right in front of them in the open.  It's not until they know what a louse he is that they actually notice it.  I hated the half-baked romantic subplot between Diaz and Kate's brother (Taylor Kinney) that goes absolutely nowhere.  I hated the unoriginal soundtrack that employed obvious and overused songs for every scene.  I hated how much contempt this movie has for both men and women.  But what I think I hated the most was the film's awful climax, which not only turns the previously cool and calm Mark character into a screaming over the top villain, but it employs physical violence for laughs to the point that the character's face is bloodied and shattered.  I don't remember when I have despised the final scene to a movie more.

This is a detestable movie, but it's the only film playing at theaters right now that's targeted at women, so it will probably make a fortune at the box office.  It's a shame that this movie decided to play at such a juvenile level with its jokes, ideas and dialogue.  A smart comedy about intelligent and likable women coming together could have been really something.

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