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THE SKINNY
What we might get if the Farrelly brothers did an episode of “Sex and the City”

THE BOTTOM LINE
The terrific comedic chemistry between Diaz and Applegate is just barely enough to compensate for the suffering you’ll endure during the few ludicrous and inconsequential scenes involving Selma Blair.

THE FULL REVIEW
Have moviemakers’ opinion of younger audiences sunk so low that they feel a comedy targeted toward this age group is incapable of generating laughs unless it is littered with inane sex gags? The studios have seemingly become so risk averse that they now look, quite mistakenly, to these gratuitous gross-out scenes as an insurance policy against failure.

The new Cameron Diaz vehicle, The Sweetest Thing, serves as the latest evidence of this unfortunate phenomenon. Billed as “a romantic comedy without the sugar,” the film smartly teams Ms. Diaz with Christina Applegate as two late-twenty-something best friends who have shrugged off looming adulthood and continue to live the single life to its fullest. Diaz and Applegate, who both clearly have a knack for genuine comedy, truly click in this film. Unfortunately, they are forced to share a significant amount of screen time with the utterly lifeless Selma Blair, who was cast in the entirely superfluous role of a sidekick friend who constantly finds herself in compromising situations (read the butt of inane sex gags).

Although not entirely original, the screenplay for The Sweetest Thing, by “South Park” writer Nancy M. Pimental, contains enough substance, some of which is fairly charming, to keep the audience engaged throughout the film’s brief 84-minute run time. Diaz and Applegate play Christina Walters and Courtney Rockliffe, who, when it comes to dating, have one simple rule: avoid searching for Mr. Right and focus on Mr. Right Now (of course, having goddess-like looks is what affords one the luxury of living by such a hassle-free rule). When their third-wheel friend, Jane Burns (Selma Blair) is dumped by her fiancée, Christina and Courtney suggest a girls-night-out to remedy the unfortunate situation. In an ironic turn of events, after the girls target an unsuspecting man named Peter (Thomas Jane) to serve solely as Jane’s Mr. Right Now for the evening, Christina actually ends up falling for him. Ultimately, it takes a spur-of-the-moment road trip with Courtney for Christina to confront her fear of commitment and to allow for the possibility that Peter just might be her Mr. Right.

The road trip certainly contains several entertaining, if not hilarious, scenes (most notable is a dress shop “movie montage” in which the girls not only pay homage to some memorable women’s roles in film, but also mix in a well deserved jab at the once adorable, but now tiresome Julia Roberts). But, some of the film’s most enjoyable moments are when Diaz and Applegate are simply interacting with one another in otherwise relatively mundane situations (for example, a scene in which Courtney drags Christina out of bed early in the morning so that she doesn’t have to look for the designer bag she needs to borrow for work). In the end, The Sweetest Thing works best when Diaz and Applegate are allowed to put their natural comic talents to work. It’s too bad the filmmakers thought they could get away with making overproduced and entirely unfunny sex gimmicks (oral sex gone bad, a dress with a Monica-like stain, etc) the real star of this movie.

By: Craig Ettinger