The last five or so years have seen a revival and subsequent landslide of gross-out sex comedies. Most sucked. One that didn’t was There’s Something About Mary, which featured heart, actual structure, and the considerable strange charms of Cameron Diaz. So it isn’t surprising that Columbia recruited Diaz when it came time to turn the genre on its ear. And make no mistake, despite much of its advertising, The Sweetest Thing is a gross-out sex comedy, one out to prove that anything a man can do, a woman can do better. (Except they got a man to direct it.)
Christina (Diaz) and Courtney (Christina Applegate) bounce through San Francisco nightlife picking up men, playing games, and making sure that nobody gets too close. In a savage and promising opening sequence, Christina’s victims relay their experiences to an unnamed videographer. Unfortunately, either director Roger Kumble or screenwriter Nancy Pimental (the lone woman writer on South Park) forgot that this implies some sort of structure, because the device only appears again, awkwardly, at the very end.
One evening after their third roommate Jane (Selma Blair) has her heart broken, the ladies go out for their usual night of taunting. After Christina lectures Jane on how to just look for Mr. Right Now, she naturally meets Mr. Right, in the form of Peter (Thomas Jane). Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a comedy if it were that simple. And it’s not. Afraid that she might really like the guy, Christina lets him slip through her fingers. The loss spurs Courtney into the two taking a road trip to find him, as they know that he was in The City for a bachelor party, and where and when the wedding would be. As must happen, hilarious hijinks ensue.
And for the most part, that’s true. The Sweetest Thing has some genuine laughs to it. Though many jokes are gross and over the top, most come out of realistic situations. The few that don’t simply betray Pimental’s South Park sensibilities, as in a crowd scene that’s larger and more multi-cultural than you’d likely get even in San Francisco. It still works.
Some jokes would have been even better if Kumble had a sense of timing. For some reason, he tends to cram jokes together rather than let them build off of each other. A roadside bathroom stop, for example, has a ruined slapstick moment involving a glory hole and broken pipes, because it’s all set-up with a rushed payoff. It’s like a little kid telling a dirty joke and not sure why it was funny.
The whole film reflects this weakness. After a decently paced set-up, the third act feels like if they can just slip everything by us fast enough, we won’t notice that Kumble doesn’t know how to make anything funny. Only when he trusts the humor in the screenplay do things really roll.
But as funny as it is, Pimental’s screenplay cheats horribly to make its plot work. The macguffin of the wedding is kept unrealistically vague, to the extent that a foul-mouthed old man seems to be the groom’s grandfather early in the movie, but clearly related to the bride at the actual wedding. Actually, a lot of details like that are slippery in this narrative, including the glaringly obvious point that the characters’ actions are at odds with the moral of the story. If you’re going to do a female frat comedy (sorority comedy?), remember that the best of them allow their characters to have their cake and eat it, too.
What keeps it all going is the fearlessness of Diaz and Applegate. They make a surprisingly good team, and strike the right note of disinterest masking longing. Certainly, the film allows Applegate to do smarter work than her days on Married: With Children. Blair has little to do but play embarrassed, which she does well enough.
The real surprise comes from another sitcom refugee, Jason Bateman, as Peter’s brother. Playing the film’s idea of a real pig, Bateman spins it by adding a feminine quality to the character, and some of the most unexpectedly funny line deliveries come from him. Would that Thomas Jane had done something to add to his character besides just be nice.
For what it’s trying to be, The Sweetest Thing doesn’t quite make it. But it will make you laugh, and opens the door for other women to take a shot. Or maybe for Pimental to try again, because she’s obviously a funny writer. Next time, she’ll prove it.
