The Other Woman

The Other Woman – Carly’s new boyfriend, Mark, seems the perfect package – he’s handsome, fun to be with and is always there when she wants to spend time with him. However, she decides to pay him a surprise visit only to be greeted by his wife, Kate. On discovering her husband’s infidelity Kate struggles to cope and, needing someone to talk to, befriends the reluctant Carly. When the pair find out that Mark is cheating on both of them, they set out to meet the new girlfriend and the three scorned women hatch a plan to exact their revenge.

The Other Woman (2014) – Director: Nick Cassavetes

Rating: 12

Running Length: 109 mins

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Genre: Comedy, Romance

REVIEW: ‘THE OTHER WOMAN’

Cameron Diaz, who is currently in ‘darling of the chick flicks’ mode, leads ‘The Other Woman’ which takes the familiar story of scorned women taking their revenge on the cheating man who has broken their hearts. While this concept is hardly groundbreaking, the opportunity for some great laughs and drama was there for the taking. Sadly, the terrible jokes, chauvinistic approach and lazy script-writing removes all the joy and makes this a bland and sometimes embarrassingly unfunny film.

This movie would have you believe that there are only three types of women: the neurotic one (Mann), the tough, career minded one (Diaz) and the bimbo (Kate Upton). It would also have you believe that a woman’s life cannot be complete without a man, which seems totally opposite to the message that this story is trying to tell! Mann, who plays Kate – the wife whose life shatters around her – appears to be mentally unstable and screeches her way through from start to finish in a one dimensional stereotype played to the extreme.

Without any serious dramatic turns to move the plot along nor depth to any of the characters, the jokes are all that is left to appeal, and when these are bad (and often dragged out for far too long), there is nothing else that ‘The Other Woman’ can fall back on to save itself. This story has been done many time before in many better ways, making ‘The Other Woman’ a very disappointing excuse for a comedy movie with very few redeeming features.

IS ‘THE OTHER WOMAN’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

When Carly and Mark first meet, they are seen to be kissing passionately and enter a hotel room. The dialogue explains that they have only just met and after a brief conversation, it is made very clear that the two become intimate. Their relationship continues and there is frequent physical intimacy between them. Carly later tells another character that they had sex at least fifty times.

Carly’s father has had five divorces and he tells her that he is currently dating a 24 year old woman. When Carly complains to him about something that Mark has done to upset her, his advice is for her to ‘put on something sexy and get your a** out to Connecticut’. He is aware that Carly and Mark have only been together for a couple of months and he is essentially telling his daughter to travel a long way to pleasure the man who has let her down.

When Kate visits Carly’s home, Carly invites her to sit down. Kate insists that she doesn’t want to sit somewhere that Carly and Mark had sex. Carly then struggles to find anywhere, eventually telling Kate that she will just have to accept that they had sex everywhere in the apartment.

During one scene, Carly and Kate discuss pubic hair and Kate implies that she has not shaved this area of her body for a long time. Carly is astonished and tells Kate that men do not like that. She then explains that they ‘need a little patch of happiness’. Again, the message here is that women are expected to change their bodies to please men whether they want to or not.

When Carly and Kate first see Mark’s new girlfriend, there are several close-up shots of this woman’s body. She is wearing a bikini and there are lingering shots of her bottom and breasts, she also runs across the beach, this is done in slow motion to emphasise how her breasts bounce up and down.

When Carly sees her father for a second time, she is with Kate and they are in an Asian restaurant. Two young, attractive Asian women approach Carly and Kate and begin to massage their shoulders. The rule of the establishment is ‘no hands’, meaning that the customers are not allowed to feed themselves, they are instead fed by the young women. Most of the customers are male, making this very sleazy and misogynistic.

During the final third of the movie where the three women are taking their revenge on Mark, they put laxatives in his drinks which results in a very lengthy and unpleasant diarrhoea joke. They also put oestrogen pills in his smoothies which make him develop breasts. Kate starts poking his chest which is very sensitive so he reacts in slight pain, she then begins to pinch his nipples.

A character accidentally walks into a glass door and as he does so, blood shoots out from his nose and covers the glass. It appears that he has broken his nose and as this is very unexpected, it could be a little distressing for a younger audience.

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT – ‘IS ‘THE OTHER WOMAN’ FOR KIDS?

Being an unfunny comedy which stereotypes its characters, is obsessed with sex and does little to try and be more than what is seen at face value, this is a movie which is not designed to be appealing to kids in any way. We feel that the adult themes, language and situations make this movie unsuitable for any child under the age of 12. We would also recommend caution for teenagers (especially girls) who are impressionable due to the sexist messages which tell the audience that women exist to please men and that childish revenge is the best way to deal with betrayal.

• Violence: 2/5 (some mild fighting between women, one man falls through a glass door and is quite badly injured. A young woman is shoved over and she falls to the ground)
• Emotional Distress: 1/5 (Kate is distressed throughout the majority of the movie due to her finding out about her husband’s adultery)
• Fear Factor: 0/5
• Sexual Content: 4/5 (constant moderate sexual references, language and cursing. No sex is shown onscreen but it is implied. One character says that she told another character that she had Chlamydia. The song ‘Bubble Butt’ is played during one scene where the phrase is said over and over. One character dresses as a sexy plumber, intending to sleep with her boyfriend)
• Bad Language: 4/5 (constant moderate cursing and blasphemy, one strong curse word is used. One character raises her middle fingers to the back of another character)
• Dialogue: 5/5 (one character says that he gets ‘more a** than a toilet seat’, one character tells another that she has done something which rhymes with ‘shlintercourse’)
• Other notes: Deals with themes of revenge, betrayal and friendship.

Words by Laura Record

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