The
Sweetest Thing: A Sex Comedy
for Both Sexes
The
Sweetest Thing: A Sex Comedy
OK, ladies. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Guys sometimes have feminine problems, too. No, not THOSE kind of feminine problems. Let me give you an example. Two days ago, I got a haircut, and it looked pretty darn good, I must say. But it was a windy day here in Maryland, and I didn't want to risk losing the style the minute I walked out of the shop. My long-time scissors man, Frank, asked, "Ted, why don't you let me spray it for you."
"No," I said. "Hairspray is for women."
But Frank was insistent. "Ted, I just got this new brand in. You'll love it."
So, he sprayed me. My hair held. Life was good.
Flash-forward one day later and my head itched like a bastard. It was a delayed effect, to be sure. Not something I noticed right away. But a full 20 to 24 hours after being bombed with this DDT-like, hard-to-hold VO5 itch juice, and I was in agony. It felt like a thousand tiny ants were having a house party on my skull.
I complained to one of my guy friends. His response: "Dude, that sucks. So, do you think the Redskins will trade for Bledsoe?"
Ugh! Typical man. He was no help at all. I wanted to scream at him, "DUDE, in a couple of hours, I'm gonna BE a Redskin!"
You see, not only did my head itch, but so did my forehead, my ears, the back of my neck-any place on my upper torso that this demon spray had attached itself to. I was starting to flake. I was starting to peel. In a matter of hours, I was pretty sure I'd look like the kid from Mask. There I was at a movie theater about to preview The Sweetest Thing, and I was nowhere near a shower or a kitchen sink to wash it off. Then, I went to one of my female friends, told her the same story I told my guy friend, and she was like, "Oh, you poor thing." Then, she reached into her purse and pulled out all sorts of supplies. Cotton balls. Q-tips. A bottle of this flowery, soothing liquid that she dabbed on my scratchy, itchy, ow-ey skin. And, magically, I felt instantly better. Not totally better, but I was able to watch the movie.
Girls are great that way. So, too, are "girl" movies when they are done well. The Sweetest Thing is a very well-done and VERY funny comedy featuring Cameron Diaz as a woman with all sorts of guy troubles. Now, I know what you're thinking. Cameron Diaz? Guy troubles? Only in Hollywood!
Well, not exactly.
Diaz's Christina Walters has NO problem attracting men. A hysterically funny opening montage features a long string of former conquests moaning, whining, and complaining about how they thought "everything was going great," but then Christina just suddenly lost interest and dumped them. Christina loves to go clubbing with her friends Courtney (Christina Applegate) and Jane (Selma Blair). She's a party girl who believes that it's much less painful to avoid searching for Mr. Right, and instead have fun and fool around with Mr. Right Now.
One night at her favorite San Francisco hotspot, Christina gets into a verbal joust with Peter Donahue, played by Thomas Jane of Deep Blue Sea and 61 fame. On screen, Jane bears more than a passing resemblance to a young Christopher Lambert (I kept expecting his big pickup line to be: "In the end, there can be only one.") Thankfully, the actor has charm and is able to match Diaz wit for wit in their early scenes together. You instantly know that these two are meant to be.
But Christina blows him off and goes home alone. She wakes up the next morning, realizing what a golden opportunity she missed in not hooking up with the dashing, intelligent Peter. From their two brief conversations in the club, she knows that he is from Somerset (about three hours from Frisco) and that his brother (a bearded, skirt-chasing Jason Bateman) is getting married on Saturday. Against all better judgment, pushy Courtney convinces her to "go after him."
The Sweetest Thing sounds like your standard chick-flick, right? Girlfriends taking to the road, the cute guy who got away, hugs and tears. Yup, it's got all of those things. But guess what it also has? Big laughs! The Sweetest Thing is the funniest movie I've seen this year. It's also great, great fun. The cast looks like it just had the best time making this movie, and the result is a film that is alternately silly, raunchy (VERY raunchy), and quite endearing. For 90 minutes, it took my mind off my tortured scalp, and I thank its makers for doing so.
The Sweetest Thing was written by South Park staffer Nancy M. Pimental, and her screenplay dares to make the film's three central females just as funny, horny, chatty, and wily as the guys in male comedies about sex and relationships. This is the female version of 40 Days & 40 Nights.
Diaz is just a joy to watch on the big screen. She is one of those great beauties who is not afraid to laugh at herself on screen or make herself look absolutely goofy. What's also great is her confidence in letting her other castmates shine as bright as she does, if not more so.
Applegate, meanwhile, is a revelation as Christina's best friend, Courtney. She and Diaz look like they've been friends forever, and a lot of that can be credited to Applegate never deferring to Diaz's star power, but instead matching her big-screen charm and smarts. Best known as dumb blonde Kelly Bundy on "Married With Children," Applegate shows she has a shrewd side, too. I never saw her on her NBC show, "Jesse," mostly because I believe that Americans should spend the half-hour after "Friends" taking the garbage out, getting ready for the next work day, and going to the can. But it looks like Applegate has quite a bright future ahead of her if she makes the right choices.
As Jane, the third part of the trio, Blair fares not as well. She's kind of the Seann William Scott of the piece, as her character is always getting into weird and embarrassing sexual situations. Two sequences are flat-out hilarious: the first, Jane trying to get a "stained" dress (think Monica and Slick Willie) cleaned at a dry cleaner she has known since she was a child; and the second, Jane having sex with her boyfriend, dressed as a elephant mascot (don't ask), in a department-store fitting room. But a scene later in the film in which Jane's tonsils snag on a certain pierced part of her boyfriend's anatomy is awkwardly placed in the film and feels like the filmmakers are just trying to top Ben Stiller's great zipper scene in "There's Something About Mary." It should have been a deleted scene on the DVD.
Thankfully, The Sweetest Thing has more inspired moments than uninspired ones. Many more, in fact. Diaz and Applegate get really silly during a music montage in which they try on clothes that make them look like Jennifer Beals from Flashdance, Madonna from Desperately Seeking Susan, and (silliest of all) Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman. The guys, meanwhile, get their own great sequence in which they go to a golf-driving range and take aim at the guy whose job it is to scoop up the balls from the course (from inside his caged motorized cart, the guy curses at them and screams, "I am not an animal!") The story also makes room for a profane grandfather (Richard Denni), an irate father-in-law (John Bennett Perry), and even Parker Posey as the nervous bride-to-be whose scenes I will leave for your surprise.
I have always said I'm the kind of guy who would much rather see a well-done "chick flick" than sit through a bad action movie. Still, calling The Sweetest Thing a chick flick would be doing it a disservice. It's more of a buddy flick. Go see it with a buddy--male or female--whom you can be silly with. It's the kind of a movie that will make you laugh and even feel a little bit closer to that pal of yours. And when you watch a movie like this, and you get to laugh and be silly with that friend of yours, THAT is the sweetest thing!
The Sweetest Thing is rated R for strong sexual content
(guys, this movie WILL hold your interest) and language.
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