The Other Woman is a 2014 American romantic comedy film directed by Nick Cassavetes and written by Melissa Stack. Cassavetes is other-wise known for directing The Notebook and My Sister’s Keeper. The film stars Leslie Mann, Cameron Diaz, Kate Upton, Nikolai Coster-Waldau, Nicki Minaj, Tayloy Kinney and Don Johnson.
This, like Grown Ups 2, is an example of a film that I watched without much reason whatsoever. While I enjoyed Cameron Diaz in films like Being John Malkovich, and I often enjoy the enthusiasm from Leslie Mann, I didn’t really think too much about this film. Obviously, I wasn’t the ‘target demographic’ for this film, but I, uh, watch everything that I can. If anything at all, I expected this film to have at least some charm and likeability amongst the characters, even if knew from the beginning that I wasn’t about to witness a classic film.
The Other Woman received a negative response from viewers; however, it proved to be a successful film at the box-office, making nearly five times its budget.
In the film, Carly starts a relationship with somebody named Mark that she hooked up with eight weeks prior. Mark tells her that he is heading out of town and upsets her, but after some persuasion from her father, Carly shows up at his house. Horrified, this is the exact moment that she meets Mark’s wife, Kate. Despite the awkward and bizarre meeting, Kate and Carly establish something of a rapport with each other in an unlikely friendship. They make the duo into a trio when they discover that Mark had been seeing one more woman named Amber. The film basically follows their methods for extracting revenge, and/or dealing with the emotional turmoil that it has caused.
The Other Woman offers up about the same entertainment-value that I expected, and maybe a little more. However, I think I should have credited Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann’s ability to carry a film more than what I did. Neither of them exactly offer-up brilliant and/or heartfelt performances, but they do enough to carry the film throughout. Kate Upton is certainly endowed; however, she fails at offering anything more than a few smiles while she says her lines at the camera. Mann might have been over-the-top in this film, in-fact, she most definitely is over-the-top in this film, but her quirkiness stands as one of the films biggest redeeming qualities.
I can’t really find it in me to write out all of the criticisms that I have for this film. The film is exactly what I expected for it to be, and what anyone would have expected for it to be. Everything is establish in formulaic fashion, there’s the bad-guy that needs to face consequences for his actions, and there’s the female, or in this case, females that are to teach him them. There isn’t anything really unique or innovative about it. They say some lines, usually not funny, sometimes a little funny, and other-times, they work off of the mere likeability of the cast, but nothing ever really excels or heads into second-gear.
I noticed some of the moments when they tried to head in a more serious direction, and every time it never really worked. Also, they tried to establish this as a brewing friendship between the three when the only two that seemed to have any sort of bond were Leslie Mann and Cameron Diaz. Kate Upton definitely hasn’t found her footing as an actress in film yet, but this movie didn’t do her many favors. She didn’t have much to work with, and was never really given a chance to establish much of a character for herself in the same way that the other two were.
The humor doesn’t really ever capture anything, never really finds itself in a groove, but rather feels more desperate and cheesy than anything else. Like I said, it’s about what you would expect from a film like this. A more zealous and ambitious viewer might have seen trailers for this film and thought that a movie involving three female leads might come off as empowering or bold, but this film does very little of any of those things. Like I said, … it’s about what you’d expect.
In conclusion, The Other Woman isn’t a terrible film. Instead, this film is merely another cog on the wheel. There are no moments where it thrives or excels, but there are no moments that really stand out as particularly stellar. Some might like it if they are looking for something a little simple and mindless, but others will merely see it as simple and mindless.
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