Movie Review - The Other Woman

The Other Woman (2014)

Starring Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Taylor Kinney, Nikki Minaj, and Don Johnson

Directed by Nick Cassavetes

It's unfathomable to me that a movie as heinous as The Other Woman made nearly $85 million.  It's kind of amazing what the American public will tolerate in their romantic comedies -- a genre that's admittedly difficult to perfect, but is also difficult to screw up this badly.

In one of the most grating performances I've seen in a long time, Leslie Mann is Kate King, the do-good housewife of Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a businessman who often travels for his job.  In his travels, he sleeps around on Kate -- her shrill demeanor likely pushed him over the edge, but that's not really an excuse...I guess...although Kate is seriously one of the most obnoxiously shrill characters I've seen put on film.  Two of Mark's conquests are lawyer Carly (Cameron Diaz) and jobless twentysomething Amber (Kate Upton), whom Kate discovers after doing a little digging on her husband.  None of the three ladies knew about one another, but they decide to team up and enact revenge on Mark by doing such things as putting strong laxatives and female hormones in his drinks like any grade-schooler would do to prank an enemy.  Perhaps funny for a twelve year-old, but these are adult women here.  It's really just pathetic.

Perhaps attempting to create some woman's empowerment-type picture, screenwriter Melissa Stack's film is an embarrassment and most of the fault lies in her childishly immature script.  However, the other huge blot of horror in The Other Woman is Leslie Mann's performance.  Grating, obnoxious, and painful to watch, Mann is just atrocious here.  (Just look at her in that poster!  It's annoying just looking at that!)  At first, I was giving Mann the benefit of the doubt thinking that it was the script's fault, but Mann also must take the heat here.  She's simply not funny in any scene and her character is so immature that it made me understand why her husband would want to cheat on her.  Any type of empathy I was supposed to feel towards Kate was completely negated by both Mann and the role the script gave her.

Yes, Kate Upton is gorgeous and Cameron Diaz is actually decent, but the film is a train wreck and one that should be avoided at all costs.

The RyMickey Rating:  F