The Other Woman (2014) *

Directed by:  Nick Cassavetes

Starring:  Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Nicki Minaj, Don Johnson

Sometimes after watching an abysmal movie, I think about the scripts that were passed over in favor of the one that was made into the wretched film.     I think that at least some of those scripts have to be better.    They likely just couldn't follow a formula or were not "marketable" to certain audiences which guarantees them at least a strong weekend or two before showing up on DVD a few months later. 

The Other Woman no doubt is pitched at female audiences who get to see the lying, cheating weasel guy get what's coming to him.    The concept is better than the execution.    The Other Woman is a dead, flat comedy.    The actors try to inject life into it, but once you see a guy shit his pants after drinking a laxative-laced drink, you've seen it a thousand times.    Without sounding too sexist, the brief scenes of bodacious Kate Upton running on the beach in a bikini isn't enough to make up for the other 1 hour, 45 minutes one has to endure just to see those brief scenes.

There are actually two (or maybe more) women who would qualify as "the other woman".   The man they all covet is a slick, handsome Wall Street type named Mark (Coster-Waldau) who runs pyramid schemes with investors' money.    His wife Kate (Mann) unwittingly partakes in these schemes by blindly signing whatever papers he asks her to sign.    Kate has other issues with her husband, who has carried on an affair with a corporate lawyer named Carly (Diaz) for over a year.   Oh, and he neglected to tell Carly that he is married.     Carly discovers this tidbit when she travels blindly to his Connecticut home for a rendezvous and the wife answers the door.    Carly breaks off the affair, but Kate tracks her down at her office and, in an ungainly plot twist, the two become friends.   

Kate, as played by Mann, is fingernails-scraping-across-a-blackboard annoying.     Her dialogue consists of bouts of verbal diarrhea which would drive any sane person to drink.    The two do bond over cosmopolitans (which I suppose is the female bonding drug of choice these days).    There is even a scene in which Kate's giant dog squats on Carly's floor.    Everything about this friendship is ungainly and that is even before the plot takes over.   

The two gain another ally in Amber (Upton) who is discovered to be the third woman in Mark's life when they follow him to the Hamptons one weekend.    Amber has no idea Mark was married either and the three plot revenge.    How Mark is able to juggle these women plus keep up on his pyramid schemes should be the subject of a different movie, or maybe even take the place of the plot of this one.    We know how things will turn out.    There is not one plot development that surprises or challenges us.    There are no laughs at all.    Actually, there may have been more laughs in Diaz' and Cassavetes' last collaboration, My Sister's Keeper (2009), and that is a tearjerker drama.