Damn! I get caught every time! Be it “Coyote Ugly” or “Crossroads”, I always succumb to the temptation of patronising lame girlie movies marketed with the promise of sexy jiggling. This flick is obviously tailored around the concept that Cameron Diaz is a perky hottie. It’s as if the filmmakers had watched her oeuvre and decided to do the ultimate Diaz movie, with the premise of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (but with Cameron in the Julia Roberts part), the gross-out gags of “There’s Something Mary” and even more booty shaking than in “Charlie’s Angels”! Couldn’t miss, right? Especially with Roger Kumble directing, in a follow-up to “Cruel Intentions”, one of my favourite guilty pleasures. Well, there’s little pleasure to be had here, guilty or otherwise.

Diaz stars as Christina Walters and, what do you know, there’s something about her. Guys go crazy for her all the time, unfortunately she’s afraid of commitment. But sshh! Her insecurities are hidden behind a “grrl power” facade, which she parades with all she’s got, getting her groove on every night in bars with her roommates Courtney (Christina Applegate) and Jane (Selma Blair). In spite of it all, one evening she stumbles unto this Peter (Thomas Jane) “dick” and something clicks in her, yet she’s too indecisive to do anything about it and he gets away. This could end there, but in a spur of spontaneity, Court and her decide to track him out, as they know he’s gonna be at a wedding this Saturday…

Yeeesh. Am I the only one who’s fed up with these movies which try to make us feel bad for gorgeous women who just can’t seem to find Mr. Right? I actually have nothing against romantic comedies, but only when they’re done with wit and heart, like those of Cameron Crowe or Nora Ephron. “The Sweetest Thing”, on the other hand, doesn’t even own up to its “chick flickitude”. Hey, we gotta get those oh-so-valuable 13-to-35 male asses in theatres, too, so easy with the feelings! Girls can be retarded horn dogs too, right? In with the random profanity, bodily fluids ahoy! Let’s have Courtney pee in an urinal, and Jane bring in a cum stained dress to the dry cleaner, and Christina dive between Court’s thighs to retrieve a lipstick tube, but make it look like she’s going down on her, tee hee! Even worse, the film rips some gags right out of other movies, like having Diaz nostalgically push her breasts up like Madonna in “The Next Best Thing”, or an elaborate but tedious sequence revolving around a penis getting stuck that’s a mirror image from the infamous “There’s Something About Mary” zipper scene. And even if you point out your lack of originality yourself (“Wait a minute, do we have time for a movie montage?”), it doesn’t make it any less of a pile of lazy, unimaginative filler.

“The Sweetest Thing” is too dumb to be romantic, yet too sappy to work as a no holds barred comedy. It feels interminable at 84 minutes, plagued as it is with a predictable by-the-numbers plot balanced on an incredibly contrived pseudo-serendipitous twist, beyond generic direction and an obnoxious near-Muzak soundtrack. I never thought I could get tired of watching Cameron Diaz waving her butt around, but this utterly vapid movie did just that.