Movie Review: The Other Woman

The Other Woman
Directed by: Nick Cassavetes.
Wrtten by: Melissa K. Stack.
Starring: Cameron Diaz (Carly Whitten), Leslie Mann (Kate King), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Mark King), Kate Upton (Amber), Don Johnson (Frank), Taylor Kinney (Phil), Nicki Minaj (Lydia).

The most shocking thing about The Other Woman is that it was written by a woman. The female characters in the film are basically the most idiotic clichés that you can imagine – the type of female characters usually written by men who know nothing about women. The film turns the talented Leslie Mann into a whiny, annoying imbecile. It turns the also talented Cameron Diaz into a cold hearted, career driven bitch who finds her heart – which of course means that she will eventually find a man, because every woman must be empty without one. I`m not sure if Kate Upton is talented or not – this is the first time I’ve seen her in a movie, and while I was not overly impressed with her acting skills, it’s also clear that the movie is not really interested in those skills as much as her other assets. Women in Hollywood is still shamefully unrepresented – especially in directing and writing roles – so it makes even more sad that one of the few mainstream films this year that is written by a woman is somehow more misogynistic than most other films we`ll see this year. The damn thing is basically two or three women spending the entire movie talking to each other – but still somehow manages to fluke the Bechdel Test – because all they can take about is a man.

In the film, Diaz stars as Carly – a high powered Manhattan lawyer, whose personal life is basically a series of affairs. According to her assistant (Nicki Minaj), she doesn’t eve refer to the men by name – just a vague description of them. But Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is different – or so she thinks. She dumps everyone else to be exclusive with him. But then, when she goes to his house to surprise him, she meets Kate (Leslie Mann) – the wife Mark never mentioned. Carly has no interest in being anyone`s mistress – so she stops seeing Mark. But Kate won`t leave her alone – not to call her a bitch or a home wrecker, but because she has no else to talk to about how big an asshole Mark is. Eventually the pair figure out that Mark is seeing yet another woman – Amber (Upton) – and they enlist her as well. The basic plan – make the bastard pay.

Even if the three main female characters were insulting, one-dimensional stereotypes – The Other Woman still wouldn’t work very well. For one thing – it isn’t very funny. The film seems to try to repeat the trick that Bridesmaids pulled off – that is showing that women can be just as gross and disgusting as men can be in the movies. But the jokes in Bridesmaids – as gross as they became at times – were mainly funny. In The Other Woman, they fall flat. In Bridesmaids, we get to know and actually like the main characters as people, not just the clichés they seem to be when the movie opens. In The Other Woman, the movie has no interest in moving past those clichés. When it came out, I thought that Bridesmaids was somewhat overrated – it was good, it wasn’t that good – but a film like The Other Woman shows just how hard it was to pull a film like that off at all.

I don’t want to spend too much time criticizing the performances in the film – especially by the three women. For Diaz and Mann, their roles seem to be the cliché ridden roles that they usually avoid – or in the case of Mann, when she works with husband Judd Apatow, often turns on their head to make the seemingly whiny woman into something much deeper. Here, she’s just annoying – and that’s a function of the screenplay more than the performance. I don’t even want to dump on Upton – who plays the bubbly, dumb but lovable blonde as well as they movie allows her to. She may never be much of an actress – but I cannot tell from this movie.

In short, The Other Woman is a bad film. A really, really bad one. Not only is the film not funny, which would be bad enough, but it also left a bad taste in my mouth. Its one thing for a comedy to simply miss the mark – it happens all the time. It’s another to repackage all the clichés people complain about all the time, and wrap it up in one movie – and turn talented actresses into offensive stereotypes. Sadly, that’s what The Other Woman does.

Movie Review: My Sister's Keeper

My Sister’s Keeper ***
Directed By: Nick Cassavetes.
Written By: Jeremy Leven and Nick Cassavetes based on the novel by Jodi Picoult.
Starring: Abigail Breslin (Andromeda 'Anna' Fitzgerald), Cameron Diaz (Sara Fitzgerald), Sofia Vassilieva (Kate Fitzgerald), Jason Patric (Brian Fitzgerald), Evan Ellingson (Jesse Fitzgerald), Alec Baldwin (Campbell Alexander), Joan Cusack (Judge De Salvo), Heather Wahlquist (Aunt Kelly), Thomas Dekker (Taylor Ambrose), Jeffrey Markle (Dr. Wayne), Emily Deschanel (Dr. Farquad).

My Sister’s Keeper is an emotionally manipulative tear jerker of a movie, and yet somehow it works. I am under no delusions that this movie was made for any other reason that to try to illicit tears from its audience, but My Sister’s Keeper works better than most of the films like that, because it feels honest. It earns those tears that it manipulates out of the audience. Yes the film is riddled with clichés, but the performances in the film feel honest and real, so we follow the characters wherever the story leads them.

The film is about Anna (Abigail Breslin), an 11 year old girl who was conceived by her parents to be an exact genetic match for her sister Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who at two was diagnosed with leukemia. They did not expect her to live past the age of 15, but know she’s 14, and still alive. Yes, her life has been one procedure after another, one round of chemo after another, but she’s still alive. Every time Kate has needed anything, Anna has been there to donate it to her. But now, Kate needs a kidney, and Anna doesn’t want to give it. She goes so far as hiring a lawyer, Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents to the rights to her own body. Her mother Sara (Cameron Diaz) is furious, but her dad Brian (Jason Patric) is more understanding. Her older brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson) is essentially ignored. The Judge (Joan Cusack), who just lost a 12 year old to a car accident, has no idea what to think.

My Sister’s Keeper is a good movie because it concentrates more on its characters than anything else. In the opening scenes of the movie, we feel like the movie is going to present us with cookie cutter, one dimensional characters, but over the course of the movie, we get to know these people, and understand them. They are brought to life by vivid, realistic performances by the entire cast. Abigail Breslin is especially good as the sister who just wants a normal life back, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. It’s not that she does not love her sister – she loves her more than anything else in the world – but she also wants to be a normal kid. We initially think that Sara is just a harpy of a wife and mother, but Diaz brings unsuspected depths to her character, and fleshes her out. She is real. And Sofia Vassileva is quite good as the dying sister. It’s hard to play a role like this, because you run the risk of either being seen as overly whiny, or too much of a martyr, but Vassileva finds the right notes. Alec Baldwin is good in support as always, as is Jason Patric, Evan Ellingson and Thomas Dekker, as another cancer patient who Kate falls for. And I loved Joan Cusack as the Judge, who at one point, when everyone in the family is talking at once, is asked if she wants to remove anyone and replies “No, this is interesting”. Not proper courtroom decorum sure, but entertaining.

The film was directed by Nick Cassavetes, who also directed The Notebook, another tearjerker. He knows just the right strings to pull to get under the audiences skin, yet not turn them off by being too shamefaced about trying to illicit tears. Fans of the novel by Jodi Picoult will be surprised, in my case pleasantly, by some of the changes made in the story. It now ends on a more logical, less out of left field note, that feel appropriate for the story. So while My Sister’s Keeper may not be a great movie, it is a good one. After sitting through Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen earlier that day, this movie, with its concentration of character, story and acting, was a breath of fresh air.