Justin's Rating: My car's much, much cleaner than hers. Yet, that's not saying much.
Justin's Review: Here's a question that I've thought long and hard and even longer about (though I'm usually waiting at the DMV or the KFC drive-thru for such lengthy stretches of brain activity):

Are girls as gross as guys? Or at least, can they be?

"The plot is: on its way. Seriously. The guy at the office told me it would be here by Monday, but it's Friday and I'm not waiting a minute past five."

On a certain abstract level, I know that girls are not as pure as the driven snow, and my suspicions have long been confirmed that they are just way, wayyyy better at hiding it than guys. For the most part, guys lack the sense of subterfuge that is essential to cover up a necessary belch or fart or scratch. Our minds just throw up this "pretending" shield where we delude ourselves that no one is really watching us dig for nose gold at the stoplight, while at least five cars have stopped cold at a green light and are getting it all down on camcorders because their friends just won't believe this!

Girls, well, as far as a few honest women friends have admitted, they do fart. They just do it in secret -- hiding in a closet, digging an underground tunnel, masking it as a grenade explosion. They even have been known to burp and readjust underwear, and I even had a woman friend recently confess to having laughed her head off at a vomit-heavy scene in a movie. Plus, they casually deal with a monthly issue that few men can even mention without hyperventilating and swooning.

The Sweetest Thing takes the position that girls can be just as crass and vulgar as, well, really crass and vulgar guys. While this may be distressing to some males who thought they had the sole market on snips and snails and puppy dog tails (what kind of MESSED-UP nursery tale is THAT?), I can see it being the case. I wouldn't think any filmmaker would want to use this to further the feminist cause, because I personally wrinkle my schnoz at gross guy movies (see my review on Van Wilder), but at least the playing field is levelled for disgusting bodily fluid-related jokes.

The Sweetest Thing is more or less about three female friends. There's Christina (Cameron Diaz), a manipulative relationship-monger; Courtney (Christina Applegate), who seems to be seeing a fairly nice guy; and Jane (Selma Blair), who continues her streak of sexy/geeky roles as the Fall Girl for most icky sex gags here. The plot is: on its way. Seriously. The guy at the office told me it would be here by Monday, but it's Friday and I'm not waiting a minute past five. As it is, the story is so skeletal as to be a wire hanger with three words hanging off of it -- "sex", "maggots", "semen".

Lacking even the somewhat-inspirational love story of idol There's Something About Mary, the movie disintigrates into a series of situations that are more or less (or extremely less) funny. I used to work at Pizza Hut as a dishwasher back in my teens, and I spent day after day digging through bus tubs full of cold Pepsi, half-eaten food and other things that no man was meant to touch. Yet, there are a couple scenes in The Sweetest Thing that had me gagging... disgusting, not funny. You understand.

Still, with the major qualifier that this flick is essentially a female version of a ton of male gross-out movies, I did watch through the end and even took a liking to it once I cut out the rotten parts of the apple. For one thing, I haven't seen a movie like this where girls are goofy, nutty and insanely fun friends without having to resort to Kleenex Talks and appearing superior to man-people every five minutes. Here's three girls who are just who they are, living in their own reality and finding it just as bizarre as guys'. Watching them interact (particularly when pulling pranks on each other) is definitely the highlight. The Sweetest Thing also has an edge of unreality to it, which gives them a bit of leeway to make their own rules from time to time (including a truly tacky song in a restaurant that ends up involving the entire place in a sing-and-dance routine).

The Sweetest Thing was directed by Cruel Intentions director Kumble, a man who I quite despise for making one of the most mean-spirited films in the past decade. Despite quite a few reservations against his new opus, I think that there is something worth digging out of this soggy bus tub, if only for the revelation that girls can be guys, too -- but that's not a great reason to see it.