The Other Woman

It is one of the all-time great cinematic curiosities that Natalie Portman arrived on movie screens as a preteen actress of startling naturalism and maturity in 1994’s The Professional, yet has only grown more robotic and juvenile with each passing year. After her impressive Oscar-winning turn in Black Swan, Portman has been hitting career lows in dreck like Thor, No Strings Attached, Your Highness and now Don Roos’ mercifully shelved 2009 feature The Other Woman, which has finally been released to DVD. Portman plays the grieving, much-younger second wife to a bland lawyer, and she unenthusiastically chews on each line like a visiting space alien who had human emotions explained to her just seconds before the call of “action.” The sloppy and indulgent script repeats all of the sins of Chris Columbus’ disgusting tear-napper Stepmom, except without the fun of rooting for Susan Sarandon to die of cancer.