The Other Woman Review
Testosterone draining for sure, but fun nevertheless.
There are days when I sometimes wish I had been born a woman (is this keyboard on? Dammit!). Not in any sexual sense as I have yet to see anything even remotely male that I found the slightest bit attractive (in fact, one of the biggest mysteries of the dating world for me is how you women even put up with us. If the world actually made logical sense you would all be lesbian and men would live below ground like the Morlocks (or C.H.U.D.s), fighting, drinking beer, watching sports, and occasionally being summoned up for a sperm donation.). More from a social aspect as in my imperfect dating world women have appear to have a lot more power and can use that power to do serious damage.
Now before all the feminists I went to college with write in about the unfair social power dynamic between men and women and how much more power men actually have I acknowledge all that. My perception is based on my miserable life of always being the rejected rather than the rejector and a constant grass is always greener when it comes to dating. Odds are if I looked like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and had enough money in my bank account to actually buy a girl a meal of food I would quickly turn into the man slut he plays in this film and be singing a different toon. However, this is the world I live in and the perception I have.
Also for the record I think women have so many more cool choices in clothes. Men’s fashion has not changed significantly since 1910 and once we settle on a look we generally don’t deviate from it. Also women smell nicer and don’t have to put up a macho front in front of other women. Maintaining all this super machismo is actually a lot of work ladies. I just wish more of you appreciated the effort. Plus free dinners and you are allowed to talk in the ladies room. Sounds good to me.
Anyway, the point is sometimes when I am watching a chick flick I honestly try to see it from the distaff side and this movie made it easy to do. I am not really a Cameron Diaz fan and feel like she has been playing the same role for years but managed to engage with her character a bit. Leslie Mann was my favorite and really really funny, while Kate Upton is like the result of a scientific experiment to concentrate sexual attractiveness to a weaponized level. The fact that she spent most of the movie wearing a bikini did not in any way inhibit my enjoyment of the film if you know what I mean. Each of the three were very distinct and interesting characters and I wanted to learn more about each of them.
Therein lies the flaw however. Instead of having a protagonist for us to connect with we actually have three. Essentially not enough time and effort was spent on any of the three to let the audience really connect, leaving me wishing I knew more about each of them. Little breadcrumbs of character development were strewn about (Leslie Mann’s character was implied to be a creative genius, Kate Upton had a few lines in passing implying some serious personality issues, and there were some hints of interesting daddy issues for Cameron Diaz that could have taken away from her stoic mien) but nothing that really convinced me they were anything other than a high powered driven New York lawyer, a timid fragile suburban housewife, and a hot bimbo.
I suppose an argument could be made that this was supposed to be some kind of team up showing the value of sisterhood but that was treated as a side note. In fact the three protagonists felt like one fully developed character broken up into three distinct fragments. Also once the three of them were introduced the film more or less washed its hands of any further development and then proceeded to drag on like a pushing a car out of gas up Lombard Street. The film was a fairly short 109 minutes but it felt like all 109 of them were in the last half of Act 2.
The male lead and focus of all the feminine vitriol was as despicable as you can imaging but let me clue any female readers out there (for the sake of my self esteem and sanity I hope there are more than three of you. Otherwise 33% of my female readers is my mother) in on a little fact of dating. 
When you see a guy who looks like he just fell out of a Calvin Klein ad and every women he looks at has her skivvies burst into flame odds are far more likely he is a scumbag than the more “average” looking dude out there. Men who put in a lot of effort in looking amazing and have hours a day to be in the gym are doing so for a reason and that reason is generally pulling tail. The “good guys” you ladies claim to want are far to busy working, paying attention to their (hypothetical) girlfriend, and writing long, detailed movie reviews to get waxed and run a marathon. (the image comes from our funny t shirt category and makes me laugh whenever I see it)
Anyway, the movie. It starts out with Carly (Cameron Diaz-Bad Teacher, There’s Something About Mary, Being John Malkovich) dating the current love her her life Mark King (Marking? Really? As in a guy who marks. A little Freudian writer Melissa Stack. Oh, yeah, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau-Headhunters, Mama, Oblivion). She is a sexy, high powered lawyer who is pretty sure the sexual world revolves around her. Mark bails out on dinner with her and her father (Don Johnson-Nash Bridges, Miami Vice, Django Unchained) because his pipe burst but Carly lets her father convince her to travel to his house as a surprise.
There she meets Kate (Leslie Mann-Knocked Up, ParaNorman, This is 40), Marks wife. She bails out but the next day Kate shows up at her work. Kate more or less breaks down and Carly has to get her out and gives her some advice. 
At that point a reluctant friendship begins, mainly due to Kate not having any friends that are not shallow suburban socialites (I grew up with about 10,000 of them) and Carly more or less trying to help Kate not self destruct. Kate convinces Carly to stalk Mark on a trip to the Hamptons and there they meet his other mistress Amber (Kate Upton-Tower Heist, the Three Stooges, Exposure: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011).
The three of them form a friendship and bond. As a huge fan of the Count of Monte Cristo I would love to say they started cooking up a revenge plot but a lot of the film seemed to be them just stumbling from set piece to set piece. The character focus shifts from Carly to Kate (to the betterment of the film in my opinion. Kate was a more intriguing character) with Amber floating in the background. A romance starts between Carly and Kate’s brother Phil (Taylor Kinny-Zero Dark Thirty, Chicago Fire, Trauma). The film drags through a very long segment and eventually remembers that stuff is supposed to happen in time for a fairly fun if predictable denouement.
The stars:
I definitely found moments to laugh at. Parts of this film were very funny. Two stars. Acting was good all around, even Kate Upton (at least I hope it was acting). One star. I especially liked Leslie Mann and found her both funny as hell and extremely engaging. She was the character I was most interested in. One star. Kate Upton was eye-bleedingly gorgeous. One star. 
Every other woman in the film was at least super hot, especially Carly’s assistant Lydia (Nicki Minaj-Friends with Benefits, The Hangover Part 2, Pitch Perfect). One star. Mark was a total scumbag that you wanted to see bad stuff happen to and when it does you get satisfied. One star. I won’t say great story but it was competent. Given the dross that makes up most of Hollywood scripts were this being graded on a curve it would warrant a B- at least. One star. As I left the theater I decided I had not wasted my time (always the real challenge for a manly man such as myself when watching a chick flick). Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes:
The splitting of character focus in three different directions was not a good move. They either needed to consolidate or add another 20 minutes to the run time. I really could have used more info on each of the characters. One black hole. I thought pacing was great at first but about 40 minutes in the whole film slowed down to an almost complete halt. I was seriously wishing for a fast forward button. This might have been the perfect time to inject some of that missing character development I just spoke of. One black hole. While Kate’s desire for revenge was both comprehensible and legitimate working to ruin the life of a man who you only dated for two months seems a little extreme. Carly and Amber seemed gung ho to literally destroy Mark and some of the stuff they pulled on him had me squirming in my seat. If you have ever had any kind of distrust of women or fear of them wrecking your life you should probably give this film a miss. One black hole. This may sound petty but I really found Don Johnson’s character fake and out of place. He wasn’t in it much but every time he showed up I disconnected from the film and remembered I was in a crummy theater in Oakland surrounded by happy couples and attractive women I was too shy to talk to. I can honestly say I have always been neutral towards him as an actor so this has no previous bias. One black hole. At the end of the film they did a whole Animal House/American Graffiti-esque “where are they now” text montage that was completely out of tone with the rest of the film and totally unnecessary. Pretty much everything they said in the text was on the screen and completely obvious. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of 5 stars. Not bad. Worthy of your time. However nothing really needed to be seen on a giant screen except for Kate Upton slow motion jogging in a bikini so if that is not your focus wait for NetFlix. If it is your focus try to see it on IMAX. Date movie? Hell yeah. She will love it and you will have some nice eye candy to keep you interested. However if you are planning on cheating on your girlfriend you should probably stay away. This film might give her ideas. Bathroom break? Anywhere in that dead zone I talked about would do fine. If I had to pick a scene I’d the dinner with Mark and Kate is pretty missable. The film has already established that Mark is pond scum and nothing in that scene will do anything other than reinforce that.
Thanks for reading. I’m seeing either A Haunted House 2 or The Quiet Ones tonight so look for a funny horror review of some kind tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review please post them here and if you have off topic questions or suggestion email the to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
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