There are certain things that you invariably expect from a chick flick nowadays, you expect the main character to have fallen out of love with someone or have met someone new. You will expect that they main character will, of course, have a hilarious sidekick. There will be the guy that they fall in love with, who is just a bit of two-dimensional nasty guy who they should they never be with and then there will be the nice, patient guy who they are really supposed to be with, but they just haven’t noticed that. Some funny things happen along the way, but all is well that ends well. That’s the golden formula, stick with it and you will have a box office success.
Now, when we heard that The Other Woman was going to be helmed by Nick Cassavetes, he of The Notebook fame, we thought this was definitely heading in the direction of sentimental as well as being completely formulaic. With Cameron Diaz on board and the inclusion of Leslie Mann, who can become a little bit tiresome after two hours and a supermodel in the form of Kate Upton, it was easy to believe that this was going to be at the very least, quite humdrum and at the very extreme, pretty tiresome. Oh, how wrong we were.
The Other Woman begins with an introduction to Carly, played by Diaz, a woman in her late 30’s who has begun dating a guy that she has “cleared the bench” for. With things getting a little more serious, she goes to his house to surprise him one evening, only to discover that her love interest, Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is actually already married to the lovely Kate (Mann). Going back to the city, determined to move on, Carly receives an unexpected visit from the scorned wife and soon the pair develop a very strange friendship.
While the two begin to bond over the fact that they have been screwed over by the same guy, they discover that Mark has yet another mistress in the form of the stunning Amber (Upton). When the trio combine over their mutual hatred, they decide they are going to take revenge and not just any revenge, some pretty serious revenge, all the while letting Mark believe that they have no idea that the other women exist.
For all of the reasons listed above, you would be forgiven for thinking you were going to see something that has simply been done hundreds of times before but the Other Woman really works and that is mainly due to the charming cast. Yes, it’s hard to believe that these three women combined could completely win you over, but their friendship and some of the laughs along the way are so honest and at times, hilarious, that you can’t help but be won over by them. Mann is just simply charming while Diaz is adorable, vulnerable and quite strong all at the same time. Upton doesn’t really have much to do here but that really isn’t the point of her role, unfortunately.
The script is actually pretty funny and some of the scenarios that Kate gets herself into are just completely understandable and quite easy to identify with. Despite the star power of Diaz, Mann is certainly the character that you will feel pain for and more than a little emotion, in fact, she is holding the entire film together.
If The Other Woman falls down anywhere, it is the depiction of the men in these women’s lives and the stereotypical role they all play, Mark is just horrible, while Kate’s brother, Phil, is the epitome of nice, he might even be too nice. It’s chick flick by numbers here, but that was a little of what we were expecting.
This really isn’t anything more than your typical chick flick, but it is most certainly a lot of fun.
