The other woman

DIRECTOR: Nick Cassavetes  LEAD CAST: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kate Upton, Don Johnson, Taylor Kinney, Nicki Minaj  SCREENWRITER: Melissa K. Stack  PRODUCER:  Julie Yorn & company  EDITOR: Jim Flynn & Alan Heim  MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Aaron Zigman  GENRE: Romantic Comedy  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Fraisse  DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox  LOCATION:  USA RUNNING TIME:   109 minutes

Technical assessment:  3.5

Moral assessment:  2.5

MTRCB rating:  PG

CINEMA rating:  V 14

High powered Manhattan lawyer Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz) clears the bench of former lovers, having now fallen in love with Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a charming, hot, suave and thoughtful (but married) man.  Frustrated that Mark is begging off from a dinner date to meet Carly’s father in order to attend to some plumbing problem in his Connecticut home, Carly, on the advice of her father (Dan Johnson), nonetheless pays him a surprise visit, only to be met at the door by Mark’s wife Kate (Leslie Mann). The encounter between lawyer and wife leads to an odd partnership that will lead to an even odder triad when the two women discover another mistress, Amber (Kate Upton). 

The story may be flimsy and improbable, bordering on the female fantasy of teaching a philandering husband a bitter lesson, but achieves its aim to entertain by delivering enough funnies.  The funnies and the humor also swing from witty to crass but director Cassavetes must have deliberately made it so, exaggeration being a hallmark of fantasy.  The humor carousel is such that some lines will make you guffaw, while some scenes will elicit an “Eeew!” or a “Yuck!” from you.  The actors couldn’t have been more seamlessly cast though their roles tend to be stereotypical, and yet, everything syncs.  In fact, The Other Woman could have been titled “The Lawyer, the Wife and the Boobs”, and still deliver its brutal best with a brainy Diaz, an unraveling Mann and a bikini-filling Upton in the title roles.  And oh yes, for good measure throw in “the Cad” for Waldau, the same cad who does nasty things with his sister as Jaime Lannister in TV’s “Game of Thrones.”        

The thing to ask is—is it believable?  Can a weird sense of sisterhood grow and bind erstwhile rivals all in a month’s time?  Could a number of women who fall for the same man be real friends with one another to get even with a rat of a man in the name of justice?  Can justice be served simply by returning stolen money, tossing your wedding ring into the sea, or getting a divorce?  Because of The Other Woman’s theme—adultery treated lightly—CINEMA will give the movie a V18 rating.  The laughs and easy solutions tend to trivialize a serious malady in marital circles, infidelity, which in real life deserves much more than just a cursory glance in order to be understood and dealt with.  The Other Woman is a romantic comedy all right, but it is a comedy for mature adults.  For viewers with susceptible minds, such as children and teenagers still developing a sense of values, The Other Woman could be caramel coated poison.