'The Sweetest Thing' takes wing with pure fluff
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Raunchy silliness or soul-searching revenge drama? Or, to put it simply, fluff or plot? This weekend's two biggest releases are a study in contrasts.
Q: How do you know when a gross-out comedy is really a chick flick at heart?
A: When it features an absolutely adorable cameo from a former cast member of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
"The Sweetest Thing" is an intriguing variant on the current raunchfest trend in comedy, because it comes from a female point of view — the screenplay's by former "South Park" scribe Nancy M. Pimental — and because, well, some of it is actually funny. Aided by the sunny presence of Cameron Diaz, who floats above the flotsam with her sweetly buggy-eyed smile, "Sweetest Thing" is not so much a movie as an amiable collection of off-color vignettes. None of them soar, but some are well worth a giggle.
Diaz plays Christina, a chic San Franciscan who meets men and tosses them aside like empty tubes of hair-care products. When she finally meets someone who just might be Mr. Right, her two pals (Christina Applegate and Selma Blair) help her develop a scheme to get to know him better. This involves various girlie adventures such as crashing a wedding, doing some shopping, visiting a truly disgusting public restroom, and, finally, a sweet-natured sing-along of "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing" (well, it's sweet if you disregard the reason why they're singing it, which rivals the zipper gag from "There's Something About Mary").
Diaz already proved in "There's Something About Mary" that she's a heck of a good sport, and here she gamely prances around in her underwear (a Diaz staple), falls out of windows and totters about in too-high heels.
Applegate, looking like a slightly less-polished version of Jennifer Aniston, makes an appealing sidekick, and Blair gets a very funny scene at a dry-cleaner — well, I couldn't possibly describe it in this newspaper.
Christina isn't exactly a character (come to think of it, she's a female fantasy who looks like a male fantasy), and "The Sweetest Thing" doesn't exactly have a story; nor does director Roger Kumble bring much in terms of pacing or style. But Diaz is adorable, Pimental's take on gender relations is fresh (imagine — Diaz and Applegate, en route to the wedding, pause to consult a map), and then there's that "Mary Tyler Moore" cameo. No, I won't tell you who it is — for those who care about such things, it's the movie's sweetest treat.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.
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