'The Other Woman' Gender Bias and stereotyping
Whenever two women in a man’s life get together for any reason, the man is in trouble. If those two women are his wife and his mistress, there might be more on the line than would otherwise be expected. Throw in a second mistress, and there are only bad things that can happen to the guy. The Other Woman tells that story as revenge, comedy and sisterhood prevail over the philandering miscreant.
Cameron Diaz, trying to regain the magic of physical comedy that she showed in There’s Something About Mary, plays Carly the older mistress. Leslie Mann, in a role reminiscent of some Ben Stiller movies plays Kate the wife, and Kate Upton plays Amber the impossibly perfect, younger mistress in a role wrought with the dumb blonde stereotype though Amber does have some computer skills that the audience never actually sees. The laughs are few and far between. However, I am going to hazard to guess that I am not the target audience for this film, and judging from the feminine laughter in the audience, there were a lot of funny jokes if you are female. This film is close; it is just so close. Unfortunately, it falls short enough that it is hard to recommend on any level other than a gender bias one. It isn’t funny enough. It doesn’t destroy stereotypes, and the only person who gets his comeuppance is… I don’t want to spoil it for you. What would really be nice to see is for this film to become a starting point for the conversation about women working together instead of against each other. At one point, Carly says that she isn’t the enemy; he is, and she is exactly right. The Other Woman isn’t the first film to feature three women working together to exact revenge. 9 to 5 is far superior, and this seemed like an attempt to remake that film with Upton in the Dolly Parton role. Go see it with your girlfriends, just not with your girlfriend. |
See Stephen Romney's review on Movie Pilot
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