--- description: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and swimsuit fetish Kate Upton flail away in this mostly annoying female revenge comedy title: The Other Woman Movie Review: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltebb203f47e1d2778/69868c13e53aba7b614d23a7/the-other-woman-df-06793r_rgb.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # REVIEW: In _The Other Woman_, Sisterhood Is Silly by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 24, 2014 8:00 PM CUT  DF-06793R -- (from left): Leslie Mann, Nicki Minaj, Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton bond over their plot to get their revenge on a cheating, lying cad. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher TM and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Not for sale or duplication. DF-06793R -- (from left): Leslie Mann, Nicki Minaj, Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton bond over their plot to get their revenge on a cheating, lying cad. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher TM and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Not for sale or duplication.Barry Wetcher—© 2013 Twentieth Century Fox by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 24, 2014 8:00 PM CUT One tipoff to the desperation level in any romantic comedy: dogs. If the movie’s makers are flailing for laughs, they often summon some poor pooch to register reaction shots at the purported merriment. See? Cause it’s funny! Melissa J. Stack and Nick Cassavetes, the writer and the director of _The Other Woman_, must have felt especially unconfident about their human characters, because they went whole hog (well, whole dog) with a Great Dane in the custody of Kate King, the wronged spouse played by Leslie Mann. When Kate visits the SoHo pad of her husband’s mistress, chic attorney Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz), the beast unloads a few giant turds on Carly’s gleaming floor. Later, in a cramped sports car, it whiplashes Carly’s face with its very public private parts. The female revenge comedy is as old as [_Lysistrata_ (411 B.C.)](http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/lysistrata/summary.html "undefined") and, in movies, as fitfully popular as _9 to 5_ (1980) and _The First Wives Club_ (1996). So no one begrudges the racy, PG-13 rated _The Other Woman_ for offering its comeuppance scenario against Kate’s serial philanderer husband Mark. Played by _Game of Thrones’_ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a kind of Aaron Eckhart 2.0, with equal parts charm and sleaze, he seems like Carly’s Mr. Right: thoughtful and generous as he pours on the love syrup. Even if he’s too good to be true, Carly says with a CinemaScope smile, “I just want to stay in the bubble, just a little while longer.” But the bubble bursts when Mark skips out on a date, citing drainage problems at his suburban home. Carly shows up in sexy plumber’s gear like the sexiest Strippergram, and finds Kate. **(READ: Our** [**cover story on** **_The First Wives Club_**](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,985271,00.html%20 "undefined") **by subscribing to TIME)** Comicplications ensue, a few involving the Great Dane, and build when the two women learn that Mark is sampling yet another side dish, the buxom Amber (_Sports Illustrated_ swimsuit cover girl Kate Upton), vacationing with him on a Miami beach. “You smell amazing — what is that?” Kate marvels, despite herself. Amber: “I think it’s just sweat.” The mandatory trio of women — one smart, one frumpy, one sexy, like Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in _9 to 5_, or Diane Keaton, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in _The First Wives Club_ — may now officially convene. In Carly’s succinct phrase: “The lawyer, the wife and the boobs.” We know Carly’s the brains: diplomas from Cornell and Columbia are prominently displayed in her office. And Kate is, for most of the movie, a screeching idiot — not just because she’s prone to self-flagellation (“I feel that I have to go to Brain Camp”) and panic attacks in the lobby of Carly’s law firm (“_Does this window open?_“) but because she repeats each of these lines about a half-dozen times. Looking far finer than she usually does in her husband Judd Apatow’s comedies, but channeling a few of Kristen Wiig’s most grating _Saturday Night Live_ characters — say, a sour mixture of Gilly, Dooneese and Sexy Shana — Mann gives either a fearless reading of poor Kate or an unrelentingly shrill one. **(READ: Mary Pols on** [**Kristen Wiig and Judd Apatow’s** **_Bridesmaids_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/05/11/bridesmaids-kristin-wiig-review/ "undefined")**)** The two stars are meant to provide comic counterpoint — Mann whining, “I’m sad,” and Diaz snapping, “Then cry on the inside, like a man” — but they often give the impression of appearing simultaneously in different movies. Diaz, 41, who’s been playing the sensible, likable siren for half her life (since _The Mask_ in 1994) handles the badinage as if she’s in an upmarket romp with a three-digit IQ. It’s left to Mann, 42, to drag Diaz into the clumsy farce gags, as when she shoves her out of a second-story window or pretends Diaz’s legs are her own after they stumble into some shrubbery. The same bifurcation applies to the supporting male characters: Don Johnson as Carly’s five-time-divorced dad — the last time from one of his daughter’s sorority sisters — and Taylor Kinney (_Chicago Fire_) as Kate’s impossibly sweet and handsome brother. Kinney’s only function is to give Diaz an eventual dreamboat mate, as Coster-Waldau’s is to be ritually humiliated, the way every cheating skunk should. The estrogen and hair-removal supplements that Kate has been putting in Mark’s morning health drink have given him prominent nipples and a patch of baldness — embarrassments that somehow disappear before his tryst with Amber. His final unmanning, complete with broken nose, is served up at Carly’s office by the now-empowered female trio. **(READ: Richard Schickel on** [**Cameron Diaz in** **_What Happens in Vegas_**](http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1738649,00.html%20 "undefined")**)** And yet, all three women are less watchable and amusing that Nicki Minaj as Carly’s legal assistant Lydia. Here’s someone who enjoys a job she doesn’t feel the need to excel in — “It’s like having a hobby that pays well” — and dispenses the working-girl wisdom that “Selfish people live longer.” In her first onscreen movie role (after voice work in _Ice Age: Continental Drift_), the rapper proves herself star material. Utterly relaxed, she delivers her lines in a silky or growly tone and represents the note of skepticism that _The Other Woman_ could use more of. Instead, Minaj disappears while the film goes away, and awry, with the lawyer, the wife and the boobs. 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