The Other Woman (2009)
You might put up with this glaringly mediocre film by seeing how it deals with things that matter to ordinary people. Ordinary very rich people. It's about relationships, about wanting a child and having that go wrong, about taking care of someone else's child. It's about cheating and being in love and falling out of love. I mean, it's all good stuff.
But the writing is routine to the point of deadening. The filming (photography) is either routine or it strives in little ways to be "interesting" by moving or gliding, but for no real reason except to keep it from being static. The acting is solid but unexceptional, including the main performance by a good Natalie Portman. The music is saccharine, at least against the backdrop of these events, as if trying to inflate them.
Yes, this is an annoying movie if you pay attention to how it is made. If you are just watching for what happens, it's fine, but frankly just a bit boring. And besides Portman, the main star is, in some ways, the boy who is shuttled between parents and stepparents, and he's weirdly unsympathetic (on purpose). There are little moments that are meant to be intensely personal, and yet they seem like they're "meant" to do that. It doesn't emerge from events, or from character.
Ugh. I know many people will see this and like a lot of it. Good! It's not on the surface too bad, I know that. But the more I watched the more it got under my skin like lice.
