Review: The Other Woman (2014)

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What's with the preoccupation of television shows and movies with men having commitment issues? First, there's the soap The Legal Wife, of which I've only seen one episode of (in hospital, while visiting my grandma). And then a movie called The Other Woman started showing in cinemas.

Since it's girls' night out and the other options that night were Spiderman and Godzilla, we opted to watch The Other Woman. And that was one crazy movie to watch. Somehow, it reminded me of The First Wives Club (1996) because The Other Woman also has three women as protagonists and both movies feature one strong female character that served as the leader of the group as they took revenge on their husbands (or boyfriend, as in the case of The Other Woman).

The thing is, that's where the similarities stop. See, in The First Wives Club, the protagonists were all accomplished women (college graduates, in fact) abandoned by their husbands for one reason or another. These women took the intelligent, mature, and empowered route in exacting their revenge by getting their ex-husbands to fund a non-profit organization that would support abused women. On the other hand, The Other Woman fell really short because it featured a socially awkward woman and a stereotypically dumb blond alongside a strong lady lawyer. The slapstick revenge plot elicited a smattering of short-lived laughter, true; but in the end, the women proved that they were childish and selfish with all the hits (literally) above the man's belt... not exactly the role models women in real-life situations can look up to. 

Either way, both movies seem to convey the words of English playwright William Congreve (from The Mourning Bride, 1697): 

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

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