Even though I’m not the biggest Cameron Diaz fan around, I had some hope that her latest The Other Woman would be good. I’m not sure what I was basing this opinion on since I don’t know anything about her two co-stars Leslie Mann and Kate Upton. But I like a good comedy, I even like unfunny comedies, but any comedy that resorts to lame bathroom humor loses me.
The problem with star vehicles like this is it becomes all about the star and not the other players. For this film to work you really have to believe several things – that it is possible for Carly Whitten (Diaz) to be both a klutzy ditz AND a high powered attorney at the same time and that anyone in their right mind would actually like a neurotic housewife like Kate Kline (Mann). There’s almost no point in Upton even being in this other than to get the slow motion bikini shot. Her character Amber brings nothing to the table. Don’t even get me started on how AWFUL Nicki Minaj is.
A part of me loves the relationship that is established by these three women, I like that the film doesn’t do “slut shaming” and that they form this friendship that they never would have had if not for this one given thing. The problem with the film is Kate is just unlikable. I didn’t want to spend 10 minutes with this neurotic mess, that alone a full 90 minutes. Like Diaz her character is also all over the place one minute she seems someone intelligent, the next she comes across as a ditz.
There’s something about this film, it starts off well enough they take the time to establish the relationship between Carly and Mark King (played by Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) but never once do you believe they are in love. Diaz can’t sell it and Nikolaj just isn’t that great of an actor and he doesn’t have the star quality to pull it off. Sure he’s great as Jaime Lannister on G.O.T. but in this role, no.
Director Nick Cassavetes doesn’t know what he wants out of this film, the premise calls for it to be a comedy about women empowering themselves, but all it is a cheap, semi-offensive comedy with women doing silly pratfalls and lame bathroom humor. The humor is is too forced, pedestrian and not at all natural. The movie could have worked if it was about smart, likable women getting revenge on a guy who played them in a smart way.
Final Grade D