Movie Review: The Sweetest Thing

The Sweetest Thing (2002) 

Directed by Roger Kumble 

Written by Nancy Pimental 

Starring Cameron Diaz, Thomas Jane, Selma Blair, Christina Applegate

Release Date April 12th, 2002

The battle for the title of Worst Film of 2002 is a three-film race so far. There is John Mctiernan's expression of audience hatred, Rollerball, Dominique Swain's spiraling career suicide in Tart, and now Cameron Diaz's inexplicable The Sweetest Thing. This bizarre, gross, deeply failing comedy somehow manages to make the terrific Cameron Diaz look like a terrible person. That should tell you all you need to know about The Sweetest Thing. 

The Sweetest Thing begins in documentary style with guys talking straight to the camera about a girl named Christina who broke their hearts. This pre-credit sequence seems tacked on as if the director realized that the script didn't bother to introduce the character Cameron Diaz is playing so he had to do something desperate to get some exposition into the movie to provide comic credentials for Diaz's character. 

Once we are into the actual film we meet Christina (Cameron Diaz), your typical flighty movie chick dancing in the streets of San Francisco. Where are these pixie-ish girls who dance in the streets with no regard for the world around them? Oh right, mental hospitals.  Christina and her friend Courtney (Christina Applegate) meet up at Christina's apartment where their friend Jane (Selma Blair) is crying over a lost boyfriend. Christina and Courtney give her the typical advice, forget about Mr. Right and go get Mr. Right Now. How clever! 

The three friends go to a club where Christina meets Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane). Initially, Christina and Peter are adversarial but then they keep meeting and grow to like each other. Peter eventually invites Christina to a party but she decides not to go. Why? Well, if she goes, we wouldn't have this idiot plot where Christina has to try and find this great guy she met a this party. Oh, and she didn't get his phone number either for the same reason. 

One of my movie pet peeves is when an entire film hinges on a situation easily resolved by a brief conversation but left unresolved in service of the plot. In The Sweetest Thing all they had to do is what anyone in that situation would have done, either go to the party or exchange phone numbers. If they did that though we wouldn't have the lame road sequence where the girls have wacky things happen, like Christina's discovery of what a glory hole is. Oh so clever.

I doubt the glory hole has ever been used for a good laugh in a film, there is probably a reason for that, but The Sweetest Thing doesn't stop there. The film includes a sequence where the girls start a restaurant singalong about penis size, and poor abused Selma Blair has a scene where let's just say something gets stuck somewhere.

Writer Nancy Pimental and Director Roger Kumble want to roll around in the same mud as There's Something About Mary and the American Pie movies, but they forget what it was that made those movies funny. There's Something About Mary and American Pie 1 & 2 were funny because the disgusting jokes were in context and framed against characters who earned our sympathy. The Sweetest Thing never bothers to introduce the characters, they expect that we will like them because we like the stars. That was not enough for me.

The Sweetest Thing is legitimately hard to watch. Rather than relating to the characters I was embarrassed for the stars trapped in the film’s humiliating and stupid situations. The Sweetest Thing is a complete embarrassment. 

Movie Review Furry Vengeance

Furry Vengeance (2010) 

Directed by Roger Kumble 

Written by Michael Karnes, Josh Gilbert

Starring Brendan Fraser, Brooke Shields, Ken Jeong 

Release Date April 30th, 2010

Published April 29th, 2010

Brenden Fraser is a terrific goofball. He's been one of Hollywood's best golf balls since his breakthrough role as the caveman teenager in "Encino Man." Guileless, earnest and most of all highly committed to whatever the role calls for, that's been the hallmark of Brendan Fraser's career. Whether he is tumbling down hills, getting punched in the face, or chased by Mummies, Scorpions or Dinosaurs, Fraser's winning goofball-ness never seems to fail.

Until now that is. On the surface, "Furry Vengeance," with its anthropomorphized animals and heavy reliance on slapstick, would seem right up Fraser's alley. Surfaces can be quite deceiving. Even with Fraser giving his sincere best, "Furry Vengeance" is a bitterly ugly family comedy dedicated to bizarre innuendo and below the belt humor that even Mr. Fraser can't save with that goofy mug of his.

In "Furry Vengeance" Brenden Fraser is Dan Sanders, a family man from Chicago who has uprooted his family, wife Tammy (Brook Shields) and son Tyler (Matt Prokop), to a forest area where he is to oversee the development of new suburban homes. Unfortunately for Dan, there are already residents in this neighborhood and they don't take kindly to strangers. These residents are a scrappy group of rodents and other woodland creature friends who are sentient enough to know when they are being threatened and savvy enough to fight back.

Soon, poor Dan is being kept up at night by birds and attacked during the day by skunks, all under the leadership of a crafty raccoon. In what is likely a nod to classic Looney Tunes shorts of the 50's, only Dan knows the animals are out to get him while everyone else, including his wife and son, just think he's going crazy.

The allusion to Looney Tunes is the only humor to be wrung from “Furry Vengeance.” I managed to kill several minutes of this belligerent farce by going back in my mind to the classic cartoon frog who sang opera but only to one poor schmoe and never in front of a crowd. The poor guy would repeatedly hear the frog perform beautiful arias and then attempt to show others only to have the frog act like a typical frog. That anecdote has only a passing connection to "Furry Vengeance." Apparently just writing about this movie inspires me to seek distraction.

Among the main oddities of "Furry Vengeance" is a propensity toward gags in the script that kids won't get or, depending on their age, should not get. The screenplay has an odd tendency toward sexual innuendo outside of a sexual situation. The credit sequence is easily the most jarring of the inappropriate humor in "Furry Vengeance" as the cast, kids included, sings along to a Kidz Bop-esque remix of Cypress Hill "Insane in the Membrane." This is wrong on so many levels that I cannot begin to number them in this space.

That said, allow me to address those who are already typing their complaint; I know this is a kids movie and not meant for someone like me. I don't have kids. That said, I feel that if I had children, no matter how much they whine, I would not bring them to see "Furry Vengeance."

Regardless of whether the film is pitched to the juvenile sense of humor, I demand something more mentally nutritious for my fictional child. "Furry Vengeance" arrives at a time when the brilliant "How to Train Your Dragon" is still in theaters. Anyone who chooses "Furry Vengeance" over the thrills, chuckles and honest to goodness, wisdom of "How to Train Your Dragon" needs their head examined.