The Sweetest Thing Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)April 11th, 2002
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2001 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
Part of me was really looking forward to seeing The Sweetest Thing because I thought it would be cool to see a gross-out comedy penned by a female. Meanwhile, a different part of me wanted to see it because there's a bunch of hot broads in it (Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, Parker Posey). Sadly, both parts went home disappointed.
Thing was written by Nancy M. Pimental, who you may remember as Jimmy Kimmel's replacement on Win Ben Stein's Money. She was also a regular contributor to the highly disgusting/hysterical South Park, so I expected that kind of humor, but with dynamic women replacing the bawdy, will-hump-anything-if-given-a-chance men that generally populate films of this ilk. Instead, Pimental's three female leads are cruder, more irritating, and barely seem to enjoy the copious amounts of sex they're having (it seems like casual sex is programmed into their genetic code, whether they like it or not). Instead of strong, proud women, they're a bunch of dirty hosebags that call each other "slut" and then giggle because they all know what an astute observation it is.
So instead of doing something different with the genre, Pimental merely tries to run with the boys, but she doesn't even manage to get that right. Sure, a portion of her humor is skewed slightly toward the fairer sex (instead of pie-fucking, anal sex and glory holes, we get gags revolving around cunnilingus, vaginal cleanliness and.well, glory holes), but the remainder is the same old, tired stuff. Thing is a bit like channeling the Farrelly Brothers through Sex and the City, and even features a jizz joke that makes you wonder why they just didn't call this There's Something About Cameron (there's a Dumb and Dumber spoof, as well).
The plot is barely worth mentioning - self-centered Christina (Diaz, Vanilla Sky) is a man-eater whose inability to commit to one man causes her to beam with pride. One night, while she's trolling for wiener at a San Francisco bar, she meet-cutes Peter (Thomas Jane, 61*), who surprises her by not trying to get into her pants while accurately revealing her to be the shallow floozy she is. This, of course, drives Christina mad with desire, even though she barely knows the guy. The next day, she and gal pal Courtney (Applegate, Just Visiting) hit the road to Somerset in an attempt to meet up with Peter at a wedding he casually mentioned he'd be attending. That's right - she's ready to abandon her life as a happy, single sperm-receptacle for a complete stranger, just because he wasn't a total douche.
For what's supposed to be a road-trip flick, Christina and Courtney are barely on the actual road at all, which makes me wonder how much unfunny crap they had to excise from this beast. I can't possibly imagine how an 86-minute comedy could ever seem longer than Thing did. I was going to say it really fell apart at the end, but that would imply it was, at one point, together. Even the outtakes over the closing credits are lame, with highlights from the actual movie thrown in so you won't forget the parts that were funny on your way out of the theatre.
On the plus side, there are a handful of jokes that do hit the mark here, and Diaz is pretty fun to watch when it comes to physical comedy. It's almost enough to completely offset Applegate, whose idea of acting is to impersonate Jennifer Aniston (a trick she also employed in Visiting).
1:26 - R for strong sexual content and language
More on 'The Sweetest Thing'...
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
