The Other Woman Settles for Cheap Laughs

The Other Woman tells the story of three women—Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upton—joining forces to take down a cheating lowlife of a lover. Critical reactions run the gamut from lukewarm to violently negative:

• At RogerEbert.com, Christy Lemire calls the film funny "in sporadic spurts." It even "raises some thoughtful questions about independence, identity and the importance of sisterhood." But "ultimately it would rather poop on them and then throw them through a window in hopes of the getting the big laugh."

• Ann Hornaday calls the movie a "misbegotten pseudo-feminist revenge comedy" which, "despite presenting itself as a celebration of women’s solidarity, doesn’t seem to like women very much," she writes in the Washington Post. It "seems to have been cobbled together from any number of other, not necessarily better, movies, resulting in a tonal mish-mash of scatology, physically contorting pratfalls, and, only occasionally, genuinely observant behavioral comedy."
• In Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson sees "something likable about Diaz and Mann’s snappy chemistry." He adds that "though all of its finishings are glossy and luxe, The Other Woman is firmly lowbrow, complete with an abundance of poop jokes." Still, "as daffy springtime diversions go, you could do a lot worse."
• In the New York Times, however, Stephen Holden doesn't hold back. The movie is "so dumb, lazy, clumsily assembled, and unoriginal, it could crush any actor forced to execute its leaden slapstick gags and mouth its crude, humorless dialogue," he writes.

(More Kate Upton stories.)