I do not own the above image. Copyright Twentieth Century Fox. All Rights Reserved.
Ladies: If you found out your
husband was cheating on you when you thought he was on a business trip, what
would you do? A normal woman (like my
wife) would perform a castration on that man’s wallet & genitalia. If you’re screenwriter Melissa Stack and director
Nick Cassavetes, you make a would-be comedy about three women seeking juvenile revenge.
Carly Whitten (Diaz) has it
all. A great job with a personal
assistant at a top law firm in NYC. An
apartment every law student dreams of.
And, most importantly, a successful man Mark who fulfills every want and
desire. One night, Carly arrives at Mark’s
house to surprise him, only to be met at the door by Kate (Mann), Mark’s wife. From there, Carly & Kate (slowly) join
forces to get to the bottom of Mark’s deceitful ways, eventually being joined
by mistress #3 Amber (Upton).
THE OTHER WOMAN has a setup that, if
in capable hands, could be amusing.
Unfortunately, Stack’s screenplay (her first) is a mess and Cassavetes
has less talent in his entire body than his late father, John, had in his left
pinky finger. Stack makes the fatal
error of letting the audience know by the end of the opening credits that Mark
is a cheater. Regardless of how a movie
is marketed, THE OTHER WOMAN (or any movie for that matter) would be better
served with a sense of surprise.
Instead, after a montage of Mark & Carly moments, we are treated to
a scene of Kate in bed on the morning after one of Mark’s trysts with
Carly. All this leaves the audience
impatiently waiting for the 12-15 minutes it takes for the two women to meet.
Cassavetes’ lack of comic talent
behind the camera is easiest to see in the scene where we meet THE OTHER WOMAN
herself, Amber. Making their way to
Martha’s Vineyard in “comedic” fashion, Carly & Kate stake-out Mark &
Amber behind some sand dunes. Now,
Cassavetes decides to alternate between binocular lens close-ups of Upton and
medium shots of Mann looking at her.
During this sequence, Diaz is not on-screen but can be heard talking
with Mann. After about 30 seconds of
this, Diaz is finally seen in a medium shot that shows her lazily half-sunbathing,
half-posing for the camera instead of searching for Amber that I guess is
supposed to be from Mann’s perspective.
While it does match the sequence of shots before it, the shot become the
model of the failed bits of humor throughout the movie. A better alternate shot would have been a
wide shot showing Kate looking for Amber while Carly is fully laid out, soaking
it all in.
Sure it’s not “Who’s on First?” in
quality, but it would have been the funniest moment of the movie. I’m not exaggerating; I sat stone-faced most
of its 110 unfunny minutes. I cringed
when Carly tackled Kate while running after Amber. I was bug-eyed when Carly helped Mark reenact
the “instant diarrhea” scene from 3 NINJAS in a bar. I was flabbergasted when the movie shifted to
the Bahamas for the ridiculously complicated third act. Finally, I just held my head in my hands,
watching in horror as the movie finally reached its climax in cheap fashion.
Mann tries her best for about an hour to
make the movie tolerable. But the
material is so terrible, I can’t help but feel (in as little of a sexist manner
as I possibly can) that Mann never went over her lines with her husband Judd
Apatow, a man who knows unfunny when he sees it. Upton could be watchable in a movie with the
director of someone like Apatow. But in
Cassavetes’ hands she’s an injured puppy on the Beltway, just hopelessly lost. Upton looks better in her weekly Fark.com
comment thread.
But the real issue is Diaz. If she’s such a huge star, why does she have an
agent, a stylist and a plastic surgeon that hate her? Does Diaz read these scripts before she signs
on? And why is she beginning to look
like Ellen Barkin? Not that there’s
anything wrong with the 60-year-old Barkin.
But it’s almost as if Diaz is trying anymore, if you believe she’s even
been trying in the first place. Sure she’s
had her moments, but they’ve all been in supporting roles. With a resume that includes “movies” like this,
THE SWEETEST THING and WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, Diaz needs the female version of
a McConaissance ASAP.
Even as I sit here, writing this
review 11 days later, I can still smell the stench of THE OTHER WOMAN on my
body. And it’s the pungent smell of
stale clichés, lame attempts at humor and lazy filmmaking. The movie is being marketed as a wonderful “ladies
night out” kind of movie. Ladies, you
deserve better.
½*
