Feature: The Sweetest Thing

Objects of Affection

The cast and crew had a suacy time making the movie where Cameron Diaz discovers Mr Right and then promptly loses him!

When it comes to dating, Christina Walters (Cameron Diaz) has a golden rule: avoid searching for Mr Right and focus on Mr Right Now. That is until one night at a club when she unexpectedly meets Peter (Thomas Jane), only to see him suddenly disappear the next day. She and her best friend Courtney (Christina Applegate) decide to break the rules and go on a road trip to find him, encountering wild and hilarious misadventures along the way. A romantic comedy without the sugar, The Sweetest Thing is a fresh twist on the search for love.

Diaz, Selma Blair and Applegate know a thing or two or three even about gross-out moments, broad comedy and sex. Think Diaz as the title character in the outrageous There’s Something about Mary, Blair in the nudity-laden drama Storytelling and Applegate in the unrepentantly in-the-gutter television sitcom Married with Children. So the trio’s ribald shenanigans in The Sweetest Thing should surprise no one. Diaz stars as Christina Walker, a gorgeous love-’em-and-leave-’em gal. Courtney is rather level-headed, if aggressive when it comes to the opposite sex, but hapless Jane falls victim to a variety of raunchy hi-jinks, all of which are played out for the camera. It’s not too far-fetched to describe The Sweetest Thing as Charlie’s Angels meets the Farrelly Brothers, as the film shoehorns in fart jokes, maggot-infested food, soiled underwear, breast implants, semen in unwanted places, stuck zipper bits, a rare dose of female bonding, and the not entirely unwelcome sight of Diaz shaking her booty at least twice as much as she did in Charlie’s Angels.

Diaz offers up her own reasons for signing on for The Sweetest Thing. “I don’t think you do these kinds of movies unless you get it,” she says. “I did it because I wanted to have some fun. I love my job, so I just felt like it was time, after working and doing a couple of films that were a little more dramatic and serious. Not that those other films weren’t fun, but I just wanted to have fun on film in that [comedic] way, and just kind of be myself, basically.”

The Sweetest Thing isn’t an unlikely project for Diaz, who regularly jumps from major film roles to smaller pieces in indie features, leading parts to supporting roles to assuming her place in an ensemble. And it’s all tied into her ongoing effort to remain as grounded as she can in an industry notorious for putting its top players on a pedestal; and we won’t even get into Hollywood’s penchant for knocking people off their pedestals. “I think you are who you are,” says Diaz, who’s got Gangs of New York opening in the US at Christmas and is about to start filming Charlie’s Angels 2 and record dialogue for Shrek 2. “This is just sort of who I’ve always been. I don’t really know how to think differently. I’m sure that I could train myself to do so, but I don’t know now. It’s hard because you never know how other people perceive you, so it’s nice to hear things about yourself. It’s just that mentality of what you grow up with. I think the sensibilities of what you were given as a child always remain with you.”

by John Reading & Terry Richards

Read more from Cameron Diaz, about 'The Sweetest Thing' and all the up-to-date film news and reviews in:
Film Review (Sep)

Columbia Pictures
Feature © Visual Imagination 2002. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Film Review (Sep)
#622, September 2002
ships from Aug 15 2002
News-stand Price
UK £3.00 / US $7.95

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