The Other Woman (2014)

3 of 10

Personal Bias Alert:  dislikes chick flicks, doesn’t hate men

            I inadvertently got to the theater early to see “The Other Woman.”  This allowed me to watch the majority of the audience stream in as one long flow of estrogen.   I don’t mean this in any derogatory or dismissive way, it’s simply the facts.  The audience was overwhelmingly female, and I didn’t see a single man there without a woman accompanying him.  What really caught my eye was the amount of families that came to see it sans their male counterparts.  Grandmothers, daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, they all came together to see this female-centric romp, chuckling and passing popcorn in a festive mood more appropriate for last weekend’s Easter gatherings.  These are the lessons we pass down now.  When a film like this comes out, you get your girlfriends together and have a laugh.  Unless, of course, you are male.  Then you stay as far away as possible.

            I can’t say that I blame the men for staying away from this one.  Inverse to the rest of Hollywood’s productions, chick flicks are notorious for relegating men to bit parts, appearing mainly as hot love interests or sleazebags waiting to get their comeuppance.  Why should men have any interest in seeing themselves portrayed this way when there’s a plethora of other films that show them in a better light?  Maybe they just really want to see Kate Upton running in a bikini, in which case, they’re in luck!

            Upton plays Amber, one of several women Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Mark is cheating on.  The other two are NYC girlfriend Carly (Cameron Diaz) and wife Kate (Leslie Mann).  Carly and Kate are the first to discover Mark’s cheating ways, which Carly is able to walk away from relatively unscathed but leaves Kate unraveled.  Kate pushes herself onto Carly, and the two form an uneasy friendship which takes up a big chunk of the early part of the film.  Once the pair discovers Amber, the three are finally fed up with Mark enough to exact some revenge.  Their plans are big, hoping to make him feel more pain than a simple kick in the balls would deliver (that was Amber’s suggestion).  Some of the things they do are boring, like slipping him estrogen pills, but it eventually gets somewhere sort of interesting when they discover that Mark’s also cheating people out of their money.

            The plot is very mixed, with the first part playing almost as a rom-com, only with Kate and Carly forming a friendship instead of a romantic relationship.  Then the revenge part kicks in, and it starts feeling more like a buddy cop movie.  It leaves the whole thing feeling unfocused and unnecessarily long.  It’s got a runtime of 109 minutes, and boy did I feel every second of it.  It doesn’t help that I don’t find the humor in this film particularly funny.  There’s a large amount of slapstick, particularly from the very game Mann, but I simply don’t enjoy that style of comedy. 

            What I’ve always found interesting about this sort of chick flick, and what this film in particular is guilty of doing, is how blatantly sexist the whole thing is.  Yes, it tries to sell itself as a pro-woman, feminist vehicle, but if you’re being this nasty to men, then you’re just redirecting the sexism.  Mark, obviously, is a bad dude.  There’s really only two other men in this movie:  Carly’s dad Frank and Kate’s brother Phil.  Frank is a cradle robbing, sex obsessed man with questionable business practices of his own.  Phil is sweet and romantic, but is given no purpose outside of being available for Carly to fall in love with.  Basically, you can either be a womanizing jerk or the bland love interest.  If refusing to allow male characters to exist as recognizable people isn’t sexists, then I don’t know what is.  To make matters worse, this film is even sexist against women!  Of course the young bombshell Amber has to be an airhead.  And how about the whole giving Mark estrogen as revenge plot.  The effects of giving Mark estrogen essentially makes him take on some feminine qualities.  Being that this is part of their revenge, the women must think that making Mark seem more feminine, or at least taking away from his manliness, is a bad thing.  That is sexist.

            Did you notice how often I took sexist pot shots throughout this review?  Movies like “The Other Woman” encourages it.  After almost two hours this film burrows into your head, letting loose all the stereotypes it reinforces.  I hate that I let it do that to me, but then again it’s fitting.  That’s all this movie is.

            Other Notes (Ridiculous Chick Flick Version):

Ø  Is dog balls in the face really funny?

Ø  Mark works in the city.  Therefore, I expect him to be familiar enough with glass walls to not walk through them.  Especially more than once.

Ø  Of course the high heel broke.

Ø  Before all this happened, what did Kate do all day?

Other Notes (Normal Version):

Ø  All the actors/actresses were good at what they were told to do.  No blame goes to them.

Ø  In a shocker (sarcasm), this is from a first-time screenwriter.

Ø  The editing in this movie is really choppy.  It flips from one close-up to another as the characters banter, staying on each one just long enough for them to deliver their line.  Every time one of the actors/actresses was about to show genuine emotion, the camera cut away.  That’s sexist (kidding).