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A cheater gets his due in ‘The Other Woman’

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Most of these women are seeing the same man in The Other Woman, if you care.

One and a half stars

The Other Woman Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. Rated PG-13. Opens Friday.

Three women who’ve all been (unknowingly) seeing the same man team up to get revenge on him in The Other Woman—or at least that’s what happens eventually. The movie takes nearly an hour to reveal the third woman (played by model Kate Upton), who joins the wife (Leslie Mann) and mistress (Cameron Diaz) of sleazy (but sexy) financier Mark (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and even longer for the revenge plot to come into focus. Before that, Mann’s Kate and Diaz’s Carly engage in tedious, unfunny female bonding, once they discover that Mark has been lying to both of them.

The women are meant to be sympathetic, but they’re so grating that it’s hard to feel bad for them, and the way they define their entire lives by the man who betrayed them is more than a little disquieting. The humor is a mix of painful slapstick and gross-out gags, with a consistent mean-spirited undertone. Mann and Diaz try way too hard, and Upton, in her first major role, looks like a very pretty deer in headlights. What’s meant to be a story of female empowerment is instead a crass embodiment of battle-of-the-sexes stereotypes.

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