Skip to main content

Review: The Other Woman (2014)

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."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu

How MALDI-TOF-MS makes mycobacterium diagnosis faster and more accurate

The laboratory I work in has plenty of instruments that help us characterise and identify microorganisms causing diseases in patients. One of my current projects is to validate an instrument called "matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometer" (MALDI-TOF-MS) in identifying members of the Mycobacterium  species. Many of these organisms are opportunistic, meaning they only cause illnesses in people whose immune systems are not strong enough to fight infections. Mycobacterium leprae  is known for causing leprosy, but we cannot grow this bacterium in culture media, so we cannot isolate it. Mycobacterium tuberculosis  complex, on the other hand, is a group of several species of Mycobacterium  that causes tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a disease that killed 1.6 million people in 2021 alone. It is a leading cause of death globally, second only to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Identifying the Mycobacterium species that has infected a patient is

a crash course on traditional Filipino houses

On Dr Jose Rizal's birthday this year, I was back in historic Manila with Ate Bing, Ate Mary , and Manuel . But instead of visiting him, we opted to soak up on Philippine culture. Our first stop: the Cultural Center of the Philippines ' (CCP) Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino .  Aside from the musical instruments, I noticed the dioramas about Filipino homes. Filipinos living by the sea (the 'sea gypsies', Sama Dilaut or Badjao ) have boathouses; those who live in the mountains, like the Bagobos , have developed interconnected houses in the trees; Filipinos who live along the path of the strongest typhoon winds, such as the Ivatans , have developed houses of thick limestone walls; and people who live in calmer conditions used bamboo and nipa to construct their houses, like the lowlanders and the Agtas . Sama Dilaut 'lepa' and houses on stilts (in the background) Ivatan limestone house nipa hut Ifugao 'fale' Maranao '