Retro review: The Other Woman an ultimate revenge movie
Warning: This review may contain mild spoilers.
Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz) is a high-powered New York lawyer specializing in corporate acquisitions and mergers. When it comes to love and romance, she and her father Frank (Don Johnson) are two sides of a similar coin: while Frank marries one wife after another (he is currently on divorce number five), Carly does not believe in monogamy, since she has several casual sexual partners at any given time.
Carly rethinks her beliefs on the matter after two months into a passionate and romantic relationship with Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) for who she drops all her other boyfriends. What Carly is unaware of is that, back in upscale suburban Connecticut, Mark is married to his wife, Kate King (Leslie Mann).
In Mark and Kate’s decade-plus-long marriage, Kate has forgone all her own dreams and aspirations to be a stay-at-home housewife, happily supporting Mark in his life, including what has been his lucrative business in developing start-ups. After Carly and Kate meet and find out about the other in Mark’s life, each has an immediate reaction based on their own life: Carly, who is not a home wrecker, willingly will never see Mark again despite previously believing he may have been “the one,” while Kate, who has devoted most of her adult life to Mark, may have a problem envisioning a life without him.
Wanting to understand what has happened and in her fragile mental state, Kate turns to the only person who she feels she can turn to and who may have the answers for which she is looking: Carly. At first, Carly is a reluctant support for Kate. Things change when they find out that they are not the only two women in Mark’s sexual life. They learn that Mark has a younger girlfriend, Amber (Kate Upton) and they befriend her. The trio decide to team-up and plot revenge against Mark.
This movie is a perfect adult alternative to the young adult movie John Tucker Must Die, except these three women know how to get back at this player better than the teenage girls. These women gave Mark hormones, put hair removal in his shampoo, gave him laxatives so he had a fecal incident, offered a three-way with a drag queen and more, all while figuring out how to get Kate’s portion of the money from their marriage.
It’s a lighthearted, feel-good comedy that ultimately becomes a story about female friendship and self-empowerment. If you’re a girl who’s ever been betrayed, felt insecure, down in the dumps, or felt like you’ve lost the upper-hand in a relationship, go see this movie. It will pick you up, dust you off, give you a pep talk, and remind you of how important it is to have good girlfriends that make you laugh and pick you up when you’re down.
Everything from the chemistry to the hilarity of the movie is definitely worth the watch and it is a movie you will be entertained by from start to finish.
