'The Other Woman' fails to show genuine emotion, character growth

Many words could be used to describe "The Other Woman," but "intelligent" is not one of these. Packed with stale jokes, empty dialogue and a tired plot as believable as "Monsters, Inc." (2001), "The Other Woman" wastes the talents of its three leading ladies, reducing them to one-dimensional stereotypes. Ultimately, the movie fails to establish itself as an empowering tale of womanhood and the bond between friends.

The movie depicts the three women at the center of one man's life: his wife and two mistresses. The women's mutual discovery of his deception becomes the strangest and yet most compelling bond in a near-sisterly friendship. Carly (Cameron Diaz) is a type-A perfectionist lawyer living in Manhattan who, upon the advice of her assistant and confidante Lydia (Nicki Minaj), goes to the home of her boyfriend Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), wearing what can only be described as a stripper-esque, "sexy plumber" outfit in hopes of reconciling after the couple's most recent fight. Carly, however, is not greeted by her loving boyfriend, but by his bathrobe-clad and confused wife Kate (Leslie Mann).

The next day Kate, in a pitiful mess, confronts Carly. During their conversation, Kate's faith in her husband disintegrates as she goes into hysterics, demonstrating Mann's skill as a comedic actress (though the rest of the script offers her little material with which to work). Over the next several weeks Carly reluctantly bonds with Kate, and the latter pushes her way into the former's life through a strange attempt at kinship. Though the logic seems twisted, Kate sees the pair as united by her husband's infidelity.

After Kate and Carly are firmly established as friends, they go on a mission to spy on Mark's rendezvous with yet another mistress. The two women maturely talk to Mark's other girlfriend, the young and confident Amber (Kate Upton). Though initially upset about the sham of her relationship, Amber joins the girls, and they spend a wild night partying together.

Now working as a trio, the women simultaneously rebuild their own lives and conspire to ruin Mark's. Carly hits it off with Kate's handsome and rugged brother, Phil (Taylor Kinney). Meanwhile, Kate begins to take charge of her life, transforming from a stay-at-home wife to a CEO. Amber, whose beautiful body seems to be the only thing anyone can talk about when the model-turned-actress is on-screen, finds a new man who respects her.

By the end of the movie, the women are happy. Mark, subjected to their various tricks, is destroyed. Did anyone expect anything different?
Well, perhaps the audience should have. Diaz is one of Hollywood's highest-earning actresses with an estimated net worth at nearly $75 million, yet "The Other Woman" glosses over her talents in comedy and drama, using them merely to accent Carly, a predictable high-strung lawyer. Mann plays the caricature of a wife, her mannerisms too irritating to be endearing, with a lack of substance that leaves her utterly insignificant. Upton's acting debut proves surprisingly decent for the world-famous supermodel, but she spends as much of the movie jogging on the beach in a miniscule bikini as she does saying actual dialogue.

While "The Other Woman" contains more female leads than a typical Hollywood release, it still perpetuates tired stereotypes, bringing down what could have been an important film for women this year. The film fails to draw emotion from its characters, a byproduct of a script that leans too heavily on toilet humor and does not adequately explore some of the deeper questions of feminism and female independence that the film attempts to ask. Regrettably, even the film’s comedy, relying on low-brow jokes and slapstick humor, feels so forced it struggles for laughs. Whether the fault lies with poor writing or bad acting, it is certain that "The Other Woman" is not a movie that anyone will, or should, remember from 2014.