The Other Woman
Directed by: Nick Cassavetes
Written by: Melissa Stack
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

The Other Woman’s flaws are large and predictable, but though the movie is slight it is also slightly enjoyable.  It feels like an adult version of the forgettable 2006 teen comedy John Tucker Must Die, where high schoolers who are dating the same dude plot to destroy his life.

Here, two mistresses (Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton) and a wife (Leslie Mann) bond over a plan to take down the charming monster who is deceiving them all (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).   This is a faux girl power narrative that fails to realize everything its female characters do is a reaction to a male catalyst.  Their lives are virtually non-existent outside of their relationship to Jaime Lannister.

Although Melissa Stack’s script has a few zingers that stick (“Cry on the inside like a winner” comes to mind), director Nick Cassavetes keeps the pacing awkwardly slow.  The first half of the movie is filled with unnecessary scenes that fail to achieve the laughs they’re going for.  This is mostly because Cassavetes, while sometimes adept at creating atmosphere, doesn’t have very good comic timing.

The New Yorker’s Richard Brody also noted this in his review:

In “The Other Woman,” Leslie Mann has an extraordinary showcase and she uses it flamboyantly, with an amazingly inventive range of inflections and line readings. She’s a major comic actor, but Nick Cassavetes does her no favors; his vague framings and ping-pong editing leach the immediacy from her performance.

The contagious energy and charisma of Mann and many of the other performers make the movie bearable, even if their characters mostly come off as a smorgasbord of rom-com caricatures.  It’s an empty confection of wealthy, privileged people attacking each other; its locales, generically sleek renderings of the Bahamas, the Hamptons and New York City, are more the point than a good laugh or a genuine human connection.

Grade: D+