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‘SCANDAL’
‘The Other Woman’ a dimwitted faux-
feminist comedy, reviews say
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In the new revenge comedy “The Other Woman,”
Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton play a trio
of scorned women seeking to give their cheating
mutual beau ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) his
comeuppance. According to film critics, though, they
would have been better off directing their ire at the
movie itself, for its lazy cliches and pseudo-feminist
slant.
The Times’ Betsy Sharkey calls “The Other Woman”
the “quintessential anti-date movie” — ironic, as it’s
directed by Nick Cassavetes, who did “The Notebook”
— and says it’s “out of control and intent on running
down a certain kind of male.”
She continues, “Slyness, slapstick and sex can often
be mixed to amusing effect whatever the specifics —
the original ‘Hangover,’ for example, did a credible
job of it — but ‘The Other Woman’ is ultimately
undone by its indecision. … Eventually the getting
even and dumbing down gets tiresome. Somewhere
along the way, ‘The Other Woman’ forgets how to
have fun with a bad romance.”
BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | Sharkey | Olsen
In a particularly scathing review, NPR’s Linda Holmes
describes the movie as “a conceptually odious,
stupid-to-the-bone enterprise” and “the most
grotesque pantomime of girl power.”
Holmes adds, “It may also occur to you just how bad
— how bad — it is that this is what we have to offer
Mann and Diaz, who show themselves in these
moments to be really able comic actresses: a story in
which they play idiots with no interests of any kind
except bickering over an utterly charmless man and
then satisfying themselves that giving him explosive
diarrhea and prominent nipples constitutes
satisfying revenge for his having apparently robbed
both of them of whatever souls and outside interests
they once possessed.”
Ty Burr of the Boston Globe agrees, writing, “‘The
Other Woman’ is one of those loud, cringe-y female-
empowerment comedies that feels like it was made
by people who hate women. It’s about a trio of
heroines who free themselves from their three-timing
man by obsessing about him constantly and plotting
revenge with laxatives in his cocktails and Nair in his
shampoo.” Burr adds, “It’s as though [the
filmmakers] conspired to come up with a movie
specifically designed to flunk the Bechdel Test: 109
minutes in which the women do nothing but talk
about a man.”
PHOTOS: Box office top 10 of 2013
The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday calls “The
Other Woman” an “unpromising screenwriting
debut” for Melissa Stack that “seems to have been
cobbled together from any number of other, not
necessarily better, movies, resulting in a tonal mish-
mash of scatology, physically contorting pratfalls
and, only occasionally, genuinely observant
behavioral comedy.”
Stephen Holden of the New York Times also finds the
film overly familiar. He writes, “This female revenge
comedy is so dumb, lazy, clumsily assembled and
unoriginal, it could crush any actor forced to execute
its leaden slapstick gags and mouth its crude,
humorless dialogue.” Eventually, “‘The Other
Woman’ settles into being a rip-off of the infinitely
superior but still minor ‘First Wives Club.'”
Not every critic has panned the film. The San
Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle, for example, says
it’s “Far from a silly romance” and finds Mann “in her
deepest and funniest role to date.”
He continues, “Written on the knife edge between
farce and naturalism … it’s directed with precision
and balance by Nick Cassavetes and put over
expertly by the cast. The advertisements might look
dumb, but the movie isn’t.”
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