Yesterday’s Other Woman riff was mainly about how Nick Cassevetes‘ hit-and-miss film, although by no means on the level of Lubitsch or Wilder, was at least better (i.e., “not half bad”) than the dumbass downmarket girly-girl film that 20th Century Fox marketing has been selling. Variety‘s Justin Chang has ignored this discrepancy and just reviewed it head-on. Chang is less admiring than myself (okay, he’s 65% dismissive), but he also feels it’s an interesting mixed-bag.
“The Other Woman often feels stranded between gross-out comedy, romantic fantasy and distaff psychodrama in a way that compels fascination and impatience alike,” he says at mid-point. “The film’s structure and pacing feel haphazard at best, the musical choices clumsily tacked on, the raunchy elements weak and unnecessary. There are moments when Cassavetes seems to be operating on Hollywood-hack autopilot, and others when you can almost feel him nudging the production in the sort of rougher, more offbeat character-driven direction that his famous father, John, might well have encouraged.