THE OTHER WOMAN is a lot like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, except the pants are Jaime Lannister and they give everyone who wears them chlamydia.
For an essentially moronic movie, The Other Woman is crazily overplotted, but let’s give it a go: Leslie Mann is married to Jaime Lannister. Jaime is having an affair with Cameron Diaz, who’s a smart lawyer (lol); Kate Upton is his piece on the side. By Hollywood logic, these women are natural enemies—surely we can expect catfights, jealousy, insecurity? Puffing itself up quite righteously, though, this movie flips the script, and introduces the notion that pretty women don’t have to compete with each other. The movie thinks this notion is pretty revolutionary, because this movie is, as mentioned, pretty moronic. When Leslie, Kate, and Cameron find out about each other, they promptly become besties and begin plotting Jaime’s downfall. (They told Cersei the club was only for natural blondes. That is a joke about HBO’s Game of Thrones.)
So far, this might not seem so complicated, but I haven’t even told you about the offshore Caribbean accounts, the hot brother, the casual racism, the “Love Is a Battlefield” montage, the Don Johnson….
As a piece of filmmaking, The Other Woman is garbage, from the arbitrary scene transitions and incoherent editing to the decision to soundtrack a scene of girls having fun with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” As a piece of entertainment, it’s yet another example of how sexism and racism regularly sneak into ostensibly broad-minded popular films under the rubric of “comedy.” But you don’t even have to dial up the outrage machine to find the film comedically bankrupt: The ladies’ grand revenge scheme involves dosing Jaime with both laxatives AND estrogen supplements. Seriously. Those are jokes.
Just about everything is wrong with The Other Woman, in fact, except for the performances of its three leads. Upton can’t act, strictly speaking, but she pulls off ditzily adorable really well, and Diaz—while not exactly one of the shining lights of her generation—is game, as always, to make herself utterly ridiculous in the service of a gag. Most notably, Leslie Mann is great, utterly transcending her boring jilted-wife role. Her performance is comparable to Kristen Wiig’s in Bridesmaids, a physical, appealingly oddball take on the plucky female lead. But don’t be deceived by the obligatory pants-pooping scene: This is no Bridesmaids, because Bridesmaids was directed by Paul Feig, an actual human. The Other Woman appears to have been directed by a Magic 8 Ball. “Will the audience notice if we make a bunch of weird jokes about Asians?” “Don’t count on it!” “Should Cameron Diaz’s love interest wear shoes?” “My reply is no.” (Fun fact: The Other Woman was not, in fact, directed by a Magic 8 Ball; it was directed by John Cassavetes’ son. That is not a joke about HBO’s Game of Thrones.)
The fact that there are three good performances in the middle of this terribly conceived and executed film somehow makes it even more offensive to women. Here’s a question a film reviewer hopes never to have to ask: Does a movie pass the Bechdel test if the women are talking about a dog‘s testicles? “Concentrate, and ask again.”
Airhead?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XNaCgKeNLU
As a piece of filmmaking, The Other Woman Is Garbage sounds like a better film right from the top.
I know how to spell bananananananananana; I just don’t know how to stop!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ePIZugahFc
Thank you Alison.
It would be awesome to see you write a feminist column for The Portland Mercury!
You are one of my favorite writers for this paper 🙂
Fun fact: this movie was written by a woman. A fact conveniently left out of the review. I guess it’s a lot more fun to blast casual racism and sexism when you’re pretending it’s a man’s fault.
Either Alison was just jesting or Melissa Stack is a pseudonym that some male writer uses, because this gaffe never could have slipped past the editor.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2602433/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
Melissa Stack
Filmography
Writer (2 credits)
2014 The Other Woman (written by – as Melissa K. Stack)
2012 Tependris Rising (Short)
I just read this review twice, and there’s no point where Hallett states that the author of this travesty of a movie is a man. It’s possible for something to be sexist and dumb (and to accurately observe sexism, racism, and dumb) simply because the dumb runneth over. Observing dumb does not equal man hating, unless you observe all references to dumb as references to men. Don’t underestimate the ability of women to write horrible things that mortify other women. See “Twilight” for another example.
Don’t hurt yourself bending over backwards to excuse the author, who did exactly what I said she did.
Amanda Sledz “I just read this review twice, and there’s no point where Hallett states that the author of this travesty of a movie is a man”
It says “Men shouldn’t be allowed to direct movies ” here: http://www.portlandmercury.com/
The Five Women of ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’
By MAUREEN DOWD
They are neurotic and sexy and smart, Woody’s women.
They are the sort of women who can appreciate the sort of man who talks about the meaninglessness of life, adenoids, ulcers, Seconal, Socrates, masturbation, Nietzsche and the Marx Brothers – often in a single breath.
As a writer, Woody Allen creates rare female roles, and, as a director, he draws rare performances from his actresses and makes them look original and enticing.
”He seems to like women. And he likes them for good reasons, rather than their figures and stuff. Although he likes those, too. Around someone like Woody Allen – and there are not many people like him – you want to be at your best. It must be some sort of organic thing.” –Carrie Fisher
Mia Farrow, who plays the title role in ”Hannah” and is Mr. Allen’s companion off-screen, feels that he is a strong director for women because he ”understands and cares about the way that a woman thinks.”
”Woody has a wonderful eye for what makes a woman look good,” says Miss Farrow. ”He could have been a fashion designer. He’s interested in women’s clothes. He can take a woman and dress her from head to toe. He may not always know exactly why, he’ll just know a certain belt is wrong.”
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/23/reviews/farrow-harrah.html
Do you… do you guys really think i am advocating that men not be allowed to make movies?
making jokes in a feminist context is such an insane rorschach test.
First off, I never intended to incite some kind of incoherent “men’s rights” rally, and I certainly wasn’t hung up on your “joke” (which I didn’t even notice until after making my first comment.) I do, however, think there’s something insidious and disingenuous about the manner in which you attribute culpability in your review. Please try to understand that I, and men like me, take gender/social equality very seriously. Therefore, when confronted by examples of racism and sexism in media for which men, for once, are not at (complete) fault, it gives me a headache to see men still being blamed. It makes me feel that the situation is unsalvageable and that the self/other tragedy among races and genders will never be reconciled, which in turn makes me despair. And whether or not it was intentional on your part, you did attribute to the male director various social crimes of which the writer of the movie ought to be at least partially accused. As a critic and professional writer you must realize that the bulk of a given movie’s content originates with the screenwriter; content which if altered by the director in any meaningful way would have warranted a co-writing credit. We can plainly see that this is not the case here. I fully realize how annoying I must seem, and how many eye-rolls I’ve inspired, but I’ve felt compelled to proceed because I’m deeply troubled by double-standards across the board, and it should be known that if men are to be blamed for every last problem in this world whether the credit is due or not, a lot of them are going to stop trying. And that’s something that neither of us wants. I guess it comes down to what you want: equality or revenge? The answer is unclear. Though I can only surmise given your Rorschach metaphor that you consider yourself and your own words inviolable, and that anyone taking issue is merely some kind of sexist pig with a reading comprehension problem. Neither of which is the case here, despite what you and your acolytes choose to believe.
You’re like the 6 or 7th person to come back at me with BUT THE WRITER IS A WOMAN as if a) i didn’t know that or b) that information has any bearing on whether the film is sexist and awful or not.
Okay—this movie was written by a woman, and it’s still racist, sexist garbage. the writer did a bad job! a woman helped make a sexist thing, in the context of a highly sexist, male-dominated industry. better?
that said, you’re overestimating how much influence a random screenwriter has on what i think/hope was a heavily improvised comedy. it is absolutely fair to single out a director for a film’s faults; it was the director who filmed the shoe montage set to “love is a battlefield.”
I see. All examples of sexism, even those written or improvised by women, are still a man’s fault. Brilliant. I’ll just go back to watching football and eating steak, or whatever it is men supposedly do.
actually, lemme reframe this: i would’ve written *exactly* the same review if the director had been female. the only thing i’d have done differently: i wouldn’t have re-used the “men shouldn’t be allowed to direct movies” tag; that only works because men direct 95% percent of the movies, and because the work of any given male director is not seen as representative of the work of *all* male directors.
Ohhh i posted that last when i thought we were having a conversation. i’m out. enjoy your steak and shit.
I would never argue against the fact that the film industry, and pretty much all industries, are dominated by men, many of whom are probably awful creatures whose worldviews would repulse the rest of us. I would also never argue that biased views towards men, especially white men, have anywhere near the same impact as those views when directed at anyone else. But the same reductive thinking is being employed, and it doesn’t do anything for anyone. And honestly, who sees the work of any given female as being representative of all females? I certainly don’t think that way, nor do any of the other males I know.
How is what I said worse than you comparing my thoughts to the ramblings of a mental patient?
Often times, the actual screenwriter is NOT credited, while various assistant producers’ spouses get the credit.
Earnest Hemingway once said: “If you want to be a writer, start writing.” With today’s relatively affordable technology, it is now possible for almost anyone to become an auteur. David Mamet has advised that having made a film of a script that the filmmaker has written, is a significant advantage in getting the attention of a major studio. If the low budget film has been well made, then it might get distributed with promotion. If the movie is well directed but suffers from poor technology, yet the script is good, it might get remade with a bigger budget and with the writer as director. If worse comes to worse, a studio might make an offer to buy the script. Failing all that, the auteur can always sign with hitmanrecords.com for a distribution deal.
Why should only the talented be allowed to make movies? Aren’t the majority less than talented? Or could the talented be considered to possess minority status and be thereby entitled to special privilege?
Weird. Was the original name of the piece changed? I could have sworn it used to read something like “This is why Men Shouldn’t be Allowed to Direct Movies” or some other thinly disguised man-hating tripe.