Mann problems

Leslie Mann is one of my favorite comic actresses, and I’ve been waiting for her to get that one project that would put her over the top as one of Hollywood’s premier go-to actresses.

I thought This is 40 would do the trick but, as it turns out, I was probably the only guy in the world who thought that was a good movie.

Now comes The Other Woman, a film that casts her as a wimpy victim of Mark, a cheating husband (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). She winds up befriending Carly, his mistress (Cameron Diaz), and she becomes a stronger independent person as the film progresses. Whatever.

Director Nick Cassavetes is trying to do a straight comedy here, and things work well enough for at least half of the movie. Mann is at her pathetic best when stalking Diaz, crying on her doorstep with Boston Market food in hand as a peace offering, and a big Great Dane in tow. I admit to enjoying this movie a little in its early stages, thinking it might be the showcase Mann deserved.

Then The Other Woman crashes into a creative wall, sending its stars through the narrative windshield and the movie into stupidity oblivion.

I’m not exactly sure of the precise moment when this one starts to go off the rails. Maybe it’s when yet another mistress, played by Kate Upton, enters the scene, and the women start working together to torture and destroy the cheater. Now, mind you, I am all for a movie where a cheater gets his comeuppance. However, I’m not actually up for a movie where one of the revenge seekers is played by the beautiful but bland Kate Upton.

If it isn’t Upton’s entrance that starts the film’s downfall, maybe it’s that moment when Carly pours a bunch of laxative into Mark’s drink at dinner and he proceeds to not only crap his pants, but have a bathroom stall moment very similar to the one Jeff Daniels suffered through in Dumb and Dumber. Now, Daniels made fecal apocalypse due to massive laxative ingestion high art. Coster-Waldau going through the same motions seems like diarrhea plagiarism.

Cassavetes has made some good movies in the past. She’s So Lovely with Penn and Travolta, and The Notebook, which gets credit for totally devastating movie viewers all over the world. The Notebook and, to a lessor extent, My Sister’s Keeper, also with Diaz, showed Cassavetes’ talent for making people weep.

The Other Woman shows that he can also make moviegoers groan, and groan mightily. Tonally, it’s all over the place, as if he set out to make a raunchy as all heck comedy and then decided to beat a retreat into PG-13 territory.

Indeed, I caught a major moment when Diaz is clearly overdubbed with a more friendly F-word when screaming the big one. Maybe Cassavetes set out to make a much uglier film, and the studio stepped in and said “Clean it up!” because they wanted a bigger box office draw. I’m not saying an uglier film would’ve been much better, but at least the film would’ve felt more consistent.

By the time Coster-Waldau smashes his nose and blood is squirting out of his face near film’s end, the movie has ceased being funny and has become a total mess. Not even the mighty Mann’s expert mugging can pull it out of the fire. It’s a depressing experience.

The Other Woman is a minor hit at the box office, so maybe its relative success will put some decent scripts in front of the talented Mann and take her to the next, deserved level. It’s hard to watch her in this sort of squalor.