The
Sweetest Thing initially seems to be trying to usher in a
new era of hedonism. The three main characters -- Christina (Cameron
Diaz), Courtney (Christina Applegate), and Jane (Selma Blair) -- go
out to a nightclub, where the girls, wearing little bits and pieces
of nothing, writhe and wriggle around on the dance floor, get the
guys to turn-on to them, and then flick them away, whether or not
they've actually bedded them or not. Christina says that, for women
today, it's "all about preservation" and setting
"boundaries:" women should have fun, but they should no longer
go out looking for "Mr. Right," but "Mr. Right-Now," and
if the right guy should come along, well, then, "eventually the
'-Now' part will just drop off."
It's
the women who are calling all the shots, here. Then, along comes a
scene where Courtney, staring into a ladies' room mirror, regards
her ample bosom and starts kneading it. The other women present
start staring at her, not because of her unbecoming behavior, but
because of her breasts. Can they touch them? "Go ahead. That's
why I got 'em," Courtney replies, and she continues her
conversation with Christina, uninterrupted, while other hands
proceed to fondle her. We're supposed to look at this scene
approvingly; instead, the characters come off as boorish and crude,
like watching the morons who flash the camera in the commercials
that appear on E! Television for the "Girls Gone Wild"
videos.
The
picture wants to be a breezy, cheerfully raunchy comedy, which is
fine -- there's nothing wrong with being cheerfully raunchy, as long
as you throw in a few good jokes along the way. Instead, the film is
brusque and thuddingly short on inspiration or cleverness. The
characters get their clothes wet, strip down to their undies in
public, and then waggle their panty-covered bottoms at each other;
Christina (played by Diaz with the muzzy features of someone who has
gotten too close to the flames of sexual heat) imagines that her
perfect man is one who will perform terrific oral sex on her,
"on the hour, every hour," while she eats huge bowls of ice
cream in bed; a biker mistakes one of the girls for going-down on
Courtney while she's driving her car, and instead of looking
flustered, Courtney encourages him into thinking that, scowling
tigerishly while swinging her arm around in the air. (Applegate
tries for a salty, refreshing candor, à la Paula Prentiss or Kim
Cattrall, that never really surfaces.)
This
may be a comedy, but there really aren't any jokes in the picture
per-ce: the characters' brand of toidey-talk is the same as where
just saying "poo-poo" and "wee-wee" out loud
will get instant laughs from kids who aren't old enough yet to
attend kindergarten. The filmmakers seem to have sat down and made
out on a little piece of paper every nasty thing they could think of
-- from "glory holes" to "anal leakage" -- then
just plugged in some dialogue and used that as their script.
Christina
is after a guy (Thomas Jane, who looks so sandy-colored in the film,
he might've just returned from a tour of duty with the Foreign
Legion) whom she met for only a few minutes, then let get away, so
she and Courtney pile
into Courtney's car and roar out of town to where a wedding is being
held, attended by both the guy and his brother (Jason Bateman). The
road trip that ensues includes a moment where they get to stop and
read the graffiti on a rest room wall, and Christina gets to
complain that something in Courtney's car smells like "moldy
ass" ( I don't even want to KNOW what that is). Then, after
spending a great deal of time celebrating sexual uninhibitedness,
the movie reverses itself and says that promiscuity is no substitute
for monogamy. It's not terribly convincing. (There are a couple of
bright spots in the movie: Parker Posey does a nice bit as a
bride-to-be who breaks out in a rash before realizing that she
doesn't want to get married. And Georgia Engel, the adorable
comedienne who appeared on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," turns
up in a small role, and I found her to be still adorable.)
Review by Gregory Avery · Nitrate Online
