Given the bad rap that romantic comedies typically get it seems
The Other Woman was bound and determined to make sure people didn't think of it as a film that fit squarely into that cardboard box and so instead first time screenwriter Melissa Stack took cues from
9 to 5 and
The First Wives Club and smashed them together into modern day giving us a comedy of errors in which three women, all scorned by the same man of course, get together and plot their revenge on the sick schlub. Thus, this is the antithesis of the rom-com, the movie not where some hopelessly romantic woman falls for a man who seems to be the perfect fit only to find out he isn't and that she has been blind to the real man of her dreams who's resided three cubicles down for years now, no,
The Other Woman is out for revenge on the fanciful relationship and instead wanting to make sure everyone knows how the wrong kind of infatuation can lead nowhere and that it's only the healthy kind that might offer more meaningful fulfillment in our little time on this earth. That said, you don't really go into a movie that looks like what
The Other Woman is going to be and expect much and maybe that is exactly why I had a pretty good time at this one. The film sports a pair of hilarious leading ladies with chemistry to burn and a solid guiding force in director Nick Cassavetes (
The Notebook, My Sister's Keeper) who seems to have a taste for the eclectic and in trying his hand at straight-up comedy for the first time in his career, for the most part, lands on his feet only to stumble a few times in the area of slapstick and poop jokes that feel too immature for the subject matter the film is inherently taking on. Everything about
The Other Woman screams that it should be easily shoved into the chick flick doldrums (shiny New York City setting, jobs for all that make life a breeze, cheesy pop soundtrack, several montages) but in a slight turn of hand we find that the film ultimately is able to divert the clichés of this formula and show the growing and repairing of relationships between women rather than the more idiotic road of watching these sophisticated women fight over a man clearly below their standards only for one of them to fool themselves into thinking our central schlub here is still the one, still worth keeping around, while never nailing down the entire male species as one stereotype.
