The Crappest Thing - a film review

 First up, apologies for any spelling errors etc. I wrote this in a fit of mild fury and then couldn't be bothered to edit it because I am hungry and Louis Theroux is on the telly in a bit...

‘I’ve basically been bored ever since 9/11’ – Jeremy, Peep Show

2001 - 2002. I was working in a pub, trying to write a novel that like the rest of the other attempts have been filed under, ‘Fucking Awful, You Suck, Give Up’. My boyfriend had dumped me almost a year before and I still wasn’t over it. I watched a lot of movies, mostly American teen high school comedies like She’s All That, Get Over it, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Cruel Intentions.

At some point, I must have watched The Sweetest Thing. I am pretty sure I did, but I didn’t keep the affection for it that I felt about all those other movies I have watched since. Though problematic (I recommend listening to Bechdel Cast’s episode on She’s All That) they were…OK right? They weren’t great, life-changing films, but they also weren’t terrible films.

The Sweetest Thing popped up on Netflix this weekend, and instead of watching something else, or poking my own eyes out with cotton buds, I waste an hour and a half of my life watching it, and a further 2 hours writing about how flippin’ awful it is. It stars Cameron Diaz (Christina) Selma Blair (Jane) and Christina Applegate (Courtney) as three friends, just a livin’ and a lovin’ their best lives in San Francisco.

What’s it about? It’s about the eternally single Christina finally getting her head turned into coupledom by a man (Peter, played by Thomas Jane. No, me neither) that she’s met once, for a few minutes. While he’s on his stag-do (though to be fair, Christina doesn’t know it’s his stag-do). 

This film is every bad 00’s gross-out, Pick- Me-Cool -Girl trope summed up in a messy, seemingly endless 90 minutes. It’s the whitest, most heteronormative, unfunny film ever. Gayness is a joke. There’s a way too long scene where it looks like Christina is going down in Courtney in the car. There’s a random snog between 2 butch biker guys, a singing camp cop and a joke about bathroom glory holes, and Christina Applegate getting her fake boobs aggressively felt up by multiple women in a club toilet. (I know that this could be making a joke about women doing this in club loos on nights out, but then…there’s a load of men watching them do it, and…yuck).

 There’s random musical interludes which includes a song about a dick being too big, and Jane gets her tonsils caught on a genital piercing. Christina and Courtney get soaking wet in one of those weird ‘car wash/ burst pipe’ scenes that always seem to pop up in pre-2010 films. There’s a joke about a semen stain on a dress that goes for about 5 minutes longer than it should have done.

 Only Jane seems to have a job, and the only reason we see her there is because she has sex with a man in an elephant costume while she’s supposed to be working. Christina is apparently an interior designer, the most chick-lit job ever, along side ‘works at a publisher’.

 In the end credits bloopers, Applegate and Diaz stick their stomachs out and make jokes about being fat. All three of the leading female cast are so unrealistically, painfully thin (though this seems to be Diaz’s natural body type, so I am not going to hate on her too much) another 00’s thing, the requirement that women’s bodies should be as small as possible, razor-blade hipbones poking above the low-rise jeans, arms that look like they couldn’t lift a can of beans.

This tells you everything you need to know about the level of humour we're dealing with here

The only thing I truly enjoyed about the film was its wardrobe, which then was VERY fashionable – I would have worn a lot of things like that. The skinny bootcuts, pointy- toed, stiletto heeled boots, cropped handkerchief tops, one-shoulder tops, sparkly make-up…ugh, I get the Gen Z hate for the hairstyles. Jane’s how do you get a short, straight bob to flip up at the ends? Why does Christina have the Super Noodles perm at the end of the film?

 Oh, and the film starts by someone randomly interviewing all the men that Christina has rejected. WHY? It’s never explained, and crops up again at the end when all 3 women are coupled up and Courtney seems to be interviewing Peter about… Christina. Then they all break the fourth wall and ask why you’re watching the credit bloopers.

 A woman wrote this film. Does she hate women? It feels like she hates women. And gay people. Possibly Chinese people too. I’m going to assume that her reason for having zero black people in the cast is because film was apparently based on her and her real-life friends, and they didn’t know any.

 This film would 100% not get made today, and for that we should be grateful. Films like this, and the others I mentioned formed much of my romantic expectations in life, because I was in my early 20s when I first saw them, and I was dumb.

 Ugh, I feel so old saying ‘these days’, but…these days…we have films like I Am Not OK With This, Booksmart, Assassination Nation, and Lady Bird, which are telling different stories, different kinds of love, different kinds of bodies. I wish they’d been around 20 years ago. What different messages would I have got, about romance, relationships with men, with friends, with myself?

 That’s enough deepness for a Bank Holiday Monday.

 What I am saying is, don’t watch The Sweetest Thing. Watch of the four films mentioned above instead. Start with Booksmart, it’s great.

 

 

Lady Bird

I Am Not OK With This

Booksmart

Assassination Nation