‘The Other Woman’ seemed to be an easy going film. I had expected a few cheap laughs and some witty humour but had not planned on writing a review on it. However, since imdb has given ‘The Other Woman’ a higher score than I believe it deserves (6.2), I decided to give my opinion.
The movie begins with Mark King (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in deep embrace with Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz). As sexually electrifying as this scene was supposed to be, it was disturbingly awkward, which was only compounded by its meagre attempts at chemistry between the two.
We then go through a series of lazy montages meant to show how pristine their love is. Carly invites Mark to meet her father, but due to a scheduling conflict Mark is unable to attend. Carly, determined to set things right, decides to pay Mark a sexy visit but instead finds out that Mark is in fact married. Mark’s wife (Kate; played by Leslie Mann) tracks down where Carly works and lives with the cold blooded efficiency of a black ops spy. Despite Kate’s stalking and incessant thirst to learn about her husband’s sexual exploits with Carly, the two bond over cocktails and frilly lingerie.
Together they find out that Mark actually has a third mistress, Amber (played by Madame milk jugs, Kate Upton) and is also defrauding his partners for millions of dollars.
The trio team up and eventually find the means to bankrupt Mark and publicly humiliate him in front of his top client. His punishment concludes with him walking through two glass-pane walls, breaking his lip and nose, having his car towed and being sucker punched by Carly’s dad (Don Johnson).
After that, it’s happy endings for everyone else; Kate is able to keep all her ex-husband’s millions of defrauded money (though she gives it away), Carly starts dating Kate’s sexy and successful, blue eyed brother, Phil; and tits ahoy Amber begins a romance with Carly’s dad who has a special taste for girls a quarter his age.
I cannot deny that ‘The Other Woman’ had its funny moments here and there, but ultimately I found the film was childish and shamelessly male bashing. It masked itself behind humour in an attempt to garner the audience’s favour while peddling some rather sexist undertones.
Carly, our protagonist, is a dry humping cliché of a strong, successful woman. She’s attractive, fearless and sassy. She has an actual ‘roster’ of nameless men she sleeps around with (Model-Man-Boy, Doctor-Not-So-Smart, Hot-Rabbi etc.) and despite her icy exterior has a soft, sensitive side as well. Her battle worn defences against frivolous men are no match for Mr. Right, who disarms her with his gaze.
The antagonist, Mark King is the embodied scum of men. He’s rich, handsome and conveniently committing fraud while using his wife as a scape goat – he represents every woman’s greatest villain; womanizing, deceitful and callous; and must be savagely torn down to ribbons. Even his final punishment is wrought with juvenile contempt; losing all his money, looks and respect in public. On the flip side, the prince charming of the film, Phil (Taylor Kinney) is romantic, passionate, humble and funny – the perfect porridge.
I understand that this is not a movie for the Oscars and it’s not the first time a movie like this has been made. Nonetheless the story itself is a display of revolting double-standards, filled with manufactured scenarios that demonize a fictional man until he’s broke and bloodied; while catapulting three vastly different women into some morally superior, bff club.
Unlike movies like ‘Legally Blonde’ or ‘The First Wives Club’, the characters in ‘The Other Woman’ didn’t triumph through epiphany nor any female empowerment, but merely through material vindication of Mark’s assets. Kate is the only one to go through any change yet she loses the most and gains the least.
Had this movie been reversed and it was a woman cheating on her plain-Dave husband with a hot stubbly man, and the two men decide to hunt this woman down, destroying her financially and then beating the bejesus out of her, there would have been boycotts for this film.
‘The Other Woman’ bears an overly contrived plot full of random, out of place fart and slapstick humour. It features ‘woman’s magazine’ mentality and everything that is wrong with the current, cultural repertoire we have with the opposite sex. The three ladies weren’t likeable and their friendship is inexplicable while the cliché cheating husband is so bland and predictable I was getting vertigo from my eyes constantly rolling back into my head.
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