The Other Woman

An exceptionally, incredibly lazy piece of work, The Other Woman details the chaos that ensues after a cuckolded wife (Leslie Mann’s Kate) teams up with her husband’s (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Mark) two mistresses (Cameron Diaz’s Carly and Kate Upton’s Amber) to wreak havoc on his life. There’s little doubt that The Other Woman, before it goes completely off the rails, holds some promise in its early scenes, as filmmaker Nick Cassavetes has infused the proceedings with an affable feel that’s heightened by the genuine chemistry between Coster-Waldau and Diaz’s respective characters – with the romcom-friendly atmosphere persisting right up until the introduction of Mann’s airheaded protagonist. Mann’s typically grating work here triggers a second half that’s rife with eye-rollingly broad and desperately unfunny set pieces, as Melissa Stack’s sitcom-ready screenplay places a continuing emphasis on elements and twists of an almost absurdly hackneyed nature. (There is, for example, a sequence wherein the three protagonists spy on Mark set to the familiar strains of the Mission: Impossible theme.) The bottom-of-the-barrel vibe ensures that there’s never a moment at which the viewer is able to wholeheartedly (or even partially) buy any of this, with the movie’s pervasive sense of artificiality ensuring that it grows more and more tedious as it builds towards its far-from-satisfying conclusion. The end result is one of the weakest movies yet from a seriously uneven filmmaker, and it’s ultimately difficult not to wonder what drew the stars to such weak material.

* out of ****