54 out of 54 people found this review helpful.
The Sweetest Whaaaa??
Date of Review: Sep 9, 2002
The Bottom Line: A movie that never figures out what it wants to be and suffers badly from its tonal indecision. (i.e. it's not very good.)
Most bad movies often seem to know that they are, infact, bad movies. And I'm all game for a bad movie now and then, especially one that relishes in its inherent badness and at least milks that for a few laughs. Unfortunately, The Sweetest Thing seems to have the audacity to think that it is, all at once, absurdly funny, touchingly emotional, and cleverly romantic. It is none of these things. Not even close. I promise you.
When trains wreck on screen like this, it's often hard to know where to put the blame. But, given that the performances weren't in and of themselves a terrible thing, especially given what they had to work with (and those that don't shine, at least manage to mostly acquit themselves) - I'd have to say the blame on this one lands squarely on the shoulders of first-time screenwriter Nancy Pimenthal and should have known better (though never does) director Roger Kumble. The movie is all over the place. It's as if a key meeting - the one where everybody decides what the movie will be about and what tone it will attempt to achieve throughout - simply never happened. Or, if it did, a significant part of the behind-the-scenes crew played hookey.
Billed originally as a gross-out style comedic romp for girls, The Sweetest Thing ultimately fulfills only half of its advertising campaign: it's gross. I'm not offended by its grossness - I regularly recommended Freddy Got Fingered to people I barely know - I merely note it here as yet another example that being gross, seemingly for the sake of being gross, is simply not funny. Oh no! The laundry man is licking the semen stain on Jane's dress to see what kind of stain it is! And now there is a field trip of children coming in to watch it all! Ha HA HAA! Oh no! Jane is giving oral sex to a guy and they become 'stuck' - his piercing slipping behind her tonsils! Hilarious! And now she has to have a group sing-a-long to Aerosmith's "Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" to loosen her tonsils! Top rate, Mr. Kumble and Ms. Pimenthal! Hats off! Uh-oh - a restaurant conversation about a man's girth turns into a musical rendition of "Your penis can't fit in here...your penis can't fit in here..." set to the tune of "I'm too Sexy"! And there's even the requisite old woman saying penis. Old people saying dirty things are always funny! Well done!!
Hopefully, you get the point. (Though I do admit to finally succumbing to the sheer stupidity of the latter scene, and eventually even managing a laugh. Don't hold it against me. Repetition can usually get me laughing every time. Repetition can usually get me laughing every time.
So, what's the movie about then? I don't know, take your pick. It's a hybrid of the worst kind - the most noisome thing being that, had it stuck to a particular style or tone instead of leaping all over the place, it might actually have made a decent movie. It's one of those movies where you can see that there could have been a good movie made from it. Okay, not a good one, but at least a decent one.
Christina (Cameron Diaz, frequently in her underwear) meets and/or sleeps with men only to blow them off soon after due to fear of commitment. One night at a bar, while trying to cheer her friend Jane (Blair) up, she pinches a guy's butt (belonging Thomas Jane) and tries to force him to dance with Jane. Peter and Christina begin to argue, Jane wanders off, and pretty soon Peter and Christina can't stand each other. Or in other words, you know that they will fall in love and things will get in the way to complicate them being together but eventually they will.
And that's it, in a nutshell. That's the weak, recycled plot that the film loosely hangs itself around, frequently using it as a jumping off point for random scenes of people being humped in work places by people dressed up as giant purple elephants, people not wearing pants for no apparent reason, and people being late for a wedding but still stopping to have a remarkably unfunny 'movie montage' dressing room moment. Among other things.
Actually, reading over this review, I think I might have made it sound even better than it is. So, to sum up quickly: it's not. It's not even close. I did laugh occaisionally, and I did bump it up from one star to two for some of its more surreal moments - the ones where you look at the person next to you and make the 'what in the hell is going on' face - but I couldn't in good faith even kind of recommend it to you. I'm sorry. It's bad while thinking its good, it cheats on its payoffs and it doesn't deliver enough comedically. In my book, three very severe strikes against it. Though it does make one wonder when Cameron Diaz will make a movie simply titled Me in Underwear, because that does seem to be her thing. Hopefully Martin Scorsese, who directed her in the upcoming Gangs of New York, found a way to avoid having a scene of her dancing around in her panties for no apparent reason. Apparently, Mr. Kumble couldn't resist the temptation.
