Music plays a weirdly integral part in The Other Woman, to the point where some kind of distinct harmony is driving a scene rather than characters (who are stuck in a plot where Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton realize they’re dating the same man). While it’s not unusual for a film to have memorable music, the songs (among them, the tunes of Frank

Sinatra and Lorde) present in The Other Woman feel distracting

because it’s the only thing in the film to have much presence. Mostly everything else is just so average as to elicit very little reaction on either side of the quality spectrum.

If I had 5 minutes with God, I think one of the biggest questions I’d ask him (along with why is there pain and what’s the meaning of life) is why people like Cameron Diaz. She’s not attractive, funny or talented, so what’s her appeal? She doesn’t bring much of anything to her lead role here, and her scenes with Leslie Mann are even more distracting, mainly because all of Mann’s humor in early scenes stems from her over-explaining things. Weirdly, Kate Upton, in her largest screen role yet, is the only one that delivers some truly funny stuff, as her puppy-dog like desire to contribute to Diaz and Mann’s shenanigans renders her loveable, a feature that separates her from anybody else in the film.

By the third act, things have deteriorated into boredom. This is the rare bad movie that’s certainly bad, but never in any noticeable ways. All you’ll discover is a movie that shuffles from one worn-out gag to the next with all the innovation of a butter churner.