"I just wanted to feel worthless and degraded and repulsive," Nicholson explains at the film's comedic high point, when even she has lost track of why she and Mohr sabotaged a perfectly healthy relationship. By then, the action has finally shifted into the stops-out bedroom farce it should have been from the beginning, but co-writer/director Wally Wolodarsky (Coldblooded) spends the early sections muddled in a thin West Coast variation on Woody Allen's Husbands And Wives (or Breaking The Waves, for that matter). A former writer for The Simpsons, Wolodarsky could have used some of that show's high energy and satirical bent, but he's grounded instead by the predictable consequences of a committed couple sowing their wild oats.
An overqualified ensemble of familiar TV faces—including Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), Josh Charles (Sports Night), and Andy Richter—fill out the densely plotted story, which tries too hard to observe the mores of a cross-section of Angelenos. In spite of her pledge to sleep with as many men as possible, Nicholson settles for a long affair with hunky contractor Matthew Davis, while the initially reluctant Mohr carries on the spirit of their original agreement and plays the field. At first, the flings renew their dormant sex life, but soon the two are consumed by jealousy, one-upmanship, and an impulse to hurt each other.
As a counterpoint to Mohr and Nicholson, Wolodarsky wastes time on a superfluous subplot about Richter's courtship of a divorcée (Helen Slater) and her bitter young son, perhaps to show how sane people build a relationship. If Wolodarsky's lifeless compositions and pacing weren't enough to suck the wind out of his comedy, then the bland earnestness of these scenes certainly do the trick. Seeing Other People eventually finds its rhythm with late flashes of dark humor and bedroom hijinks, but it takes too much time to get there.
