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Divided on ‘The Other Woman’

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Carly (Cameron Diaz) believes she has met the man of her dreams and settles for a monogamous relationship with the alluring Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). To Carly’s dismay, she discovers that Mark is married to Kate (Leslie Mann). Carly attempts to avoid Kate by any means, but Kate, now lonely and cheated on, attempts to strike up a friendship with the mistress.

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

As the women’s friendship strengthens, they eventually realize that Mark is having an affair with a third woman. They follow Mark to the Hamptons where they witness him canoodling with the voluptuous Amber (Kate Upton). Carly and Kate quickly inform and recruit Amber into their peculiar friendship. United by their hatred and mistrust of Mark, the three women scheme and plot revenge against Mark.

The idea of a wife and her husband’s mistresses bonding over revenge seems like it would be a perfect mixture for comedy. The film achieves some funny moments, but the majority of the intended comedic relief results in awkwardness and discomfort. Kate, for example, is meant to be portrayed as endearing and quirky. However, the character often goes into spiels and tangents that are incoherent and just plain bizarre.

Pacing wise, the film starts off surprisingly slow.  There are a lot of moments of silence and pauses that drag the story from progressing at a lively comedic pace. It is not until the last half of the film where the intriguing moments of revenge and hijinks ensue.

Diaz and Coster-Waldau do a good job in each of their respective roles; the former as Carly, the cold and sexy woman, and the latter as Mark, the stereotypical womanizer. His performance makes the audience scoff in disgust, but in a good way.

The film often relies on toilet humor, which to some may either delight or disgust. Initially, these moments bring up a few laughs, but after a while its gets old. By relying on the toilet humor, the revengeful acts became recycled and unoriginal.

One of the highlights and presumably key selling point to this film was to see the debut of Nicki Minaj’s and Upton’s acting chops. We see very little dialogue from both the rapper and the model.  Minaj for instance, plays Lydia, Carly’s assistant. However, her character’s action and input is so little that Minaj could have been removed from the film entirely. If this role was indicative of her acting abilities, Minaj should stick to rapping. Her speaking voice was very unclear and her accent was strange. Though Upton plays a more present role than Minaj, her dialogue is very rare and it left her character undeveloped.

The moments when the women are having fun and being friendly is the main highlight of “The Other Woman”. The chick-flick promotes the theme of independence and sisterhood, and in this respect, the movie does a favorable job in simulating those moments.

 

ONLY RECOMMENDED IF: It’s on television and you need a chick-flick to watch. The film is funny, but there are far better romantic comedies that are appealing to all movie-goers.