Like many people who have reviewed this movie, let me open by saying: I love Cameron Diaz. I love the feckless rager of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and VANILLA SKY. I love the stellar beauty that lights up MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING and THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. I love her goofiness, her un-vanity, her friendliness, her fierceness, and her inexplicable pride in that little bony rump.
But as with all people we love, there is a version of them we love... not so much. Here, it's the she-stoops-to-conquer Cameron. The forced Cameron, the diving-in-the-mainstream Cameron, the...one doesn't want to say it, but the maybe-she-actually-enjoys-this-stupid-crap Cameron. That is to say, the Cameron of CHARLIE'S ANGELS and THE SWEETEST THING.
The friend I saw SWEETEST with marched out saying, "That was literally the worst movie I've ever seen!" Well, it isn't--but I have a feeling the studio powers, and maybe some kind soul, like his agent or mother, will send the director Roger Kumble back to remedial comedy class. (Or maybe just recommend he...stick to "dramas.") The writer, Nancy Pimental (who was awesomely handed $1,750,000 for this non-script) hands Kumble at least the opportunity for various build-up-and-deliver sight gags, and Kumble fumbles--drops, shatters, steps on and kills--each and every single one. When Selma Blair, as the "plain"-est and ho-iest of the trio of chickies who are our heroines, takes a Lewinsky-like stained dress to the dry cleaners, and a troupe of kids on a field trip marches in, your Blake Edwards detector tells you that a big set piece is coming that will top and further top itself. It doesn't--Kumble seems to cut away in mid-gag.
The gimmick of the movie is: SEX AND THE CITY with Farrelly Brothers gross-out gags. Sexist or no, there's an unseemliness in watching three thirtyish-looking women play out the kind of icky teen-comedy slapstick that unfurls here. When Christina Applegate squats on a dirty urinal in a men's room to take a leak, while Diaz gets poked in the eye with a dingus through a gloryhole--well, you just wish these women had better ways to make a paycheck this size.
There were a bunch of twelve-year-old girls tittering happily at the horrible mess that is this movie, but one has to wonder how a movie this slipshod, insubstantial and, worst of all, charm-free got made. THE SWEETEST THING is TOMCATS or SAVING SILVERMAN with estrogen--only Sony produced this one in A-list, shoot-the-works mode. The sanest explanation I can find is that the sensibility of the movie--JAP-y, narcissistic, boneheaded, and in no way movie-ish--is the sensibility of the members of the sweeter sex running Hollywood.
But as with all people we love, there is a version of them we love... not so much. Here, it's the she-stoops-to-conquer Cameron. The forced Cameron, the diving-in-the-mainstream Cameron, the...one doesn't want to say it, but the maybe-she-actually-enjoys-this-stupid-crap Cameron. That is to say, the Cameron of CHARLIE'S ANGELS and THE SWEETEST THING.
The friend I saw SWEETEST with marched out saying, "That was literally the worst movie I've ever seen!" Well, it isn't--but I have a feeling the studio powers, and maybe some kind soul, like his agent or mother, will send the director Roger Kumble back to remedial comedy class. (Or maybe just recommend he...stick to "dramas.") The writer, Nancy Pimental (who was awesomely handed $1,750,000 for this non-script) hands Kumble at least the opportunity for various build-up-and-deliver sight gags, and Kumble fumbles--drops, shatters, steps on and kills--each and every single one. When Selma Blair, as the "plain"-est and ho-iest of the trio of chickies who are our heroines, takes a Lewinsky-like stained dress to the dry cleaners, and a troupe of kids on a field trip marches in, your Blake Edwards detector tells you that a big set piece is coming that will top and further top itself. It doesn't--Kumble seems to cut away in mid-gag.
The gimmick of the movie is: SEX AND THE CITY with Farrelly Brothers gross-out gags. Sexist or no, there's an unseemliness in watching three thirtyish-looking women play out the kind of icky teen-comedy slapstick that unfurls here. When Christina Applegate squats on a dirty urinal in a men's room to take a leak, while Diaz gets poked in the eye with a dingus through a gloryhole--well, you just wish these women had better ways to make a paycheck this size.
There were a bunch of twelve-year-old girls tittering happily at the horrible mess that is this movie, but one has to wonder how a movie this slipshod, insubstantial and, worst of all, charm-free got made. THE SWEETEST THING is TOMCATS or SAVING SILVERMAN with estrogen--only Sony produced this one in A-list, shoot-the-works mode. The sanest explanation I can find is that the sensibility of the movie--JAP-y, narcissistic, boneheaded, and in no way movie-ish--is the sensibility of the members of the sweeter sex running Hollywood.