The Sweetest Thing

An interminable, absolutely abhorrent comedy, The Sweetest Thing follows Cameron Diaz’s Christina as she’s forced to question her fun-loving, hard-partying ways after meeting and falling for Thomas Jane’s Peter. Filmmaker Roger Kumble delivers a sluggish and shockingly momentum-free endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes right from the get-go, and it’s clear, certainly, that the mostly unwatchable atmosphere is compounded by an ongoing reliance on aggressively incompetent elements. (An early scene set within a brightly-lit nightclub, one in which patrons are able to speak to one another without shouting, is undoubtedly indicative of the pervasive current of ineptitude running through the proceedings.) There’s little doubt, as well, that The Sweetest Thing‘s emphasis on desperate and hopelessly unfunny bits of shock comedy perpetuates its arms-length atmosphere, with the unwatchable vibe made all-the-more prominent by a series of nails-on-a-chalkboard, unreasonably broad performances. (Diaz’s pitched-to-the-rafters turn is unquestionably echoed by the two actors playing her one-dimensional friends, Christina Applegate and Selma Blair.) The misbegotten nature of virtually every aspect of The Sweetest Thing, including an eye-rollingly obnoxious musical number, ensures that it never feels like anything less than a complete and total slog, which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as an uncommonly disastrous piece of work that feels much, much longer than its 85 minutes.

no stars out of ****