The Dumbest Thing

In case anyone's interested, the Man and I did resolve our differences. Sort of. I was woken early on Saturday morning by the sound of hammering - he was fixing up our car - and he asked me what time I wanted to leave. I told him as frostily I could manage that I'd made other arrangements since he'd refused to take me, and he said he hadn't refused to take me...blah blah...so I ended up going with him and not with the nice lady from the orchestra. I never did get to tell him how furious I was, though, so revenge is still on the cards.

On Friday night, while we were still not speaking, I had the house to myself as the Man was at the pub watching footy. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to watch that evening's chick flick on TV 'The Sweetest Thing'. The announcer said that this was a movie for the girls. "Oh goody!" I thought.

It was clear pretty early on in the piece that this was the lamest movie ever. It starred Cameron Diaz and some other woman. Apparently they were supposed to be 28, but they looked at least 35 (especially craggy-faced Cameron Diaz) and acted about 16. A dumb 16. (Though that does average out to be 25 and a half…)

It started off with the girls going to a club, squealing a lot and telling their friend she needed to get out there and have sex with someone (I guess they haven’t heard of the HPV virus or other STDs, and at their age too, you really wonder). They knocked back drinks and talked about the men as if they were meat, kind of like men do about women. Only not all men, only the really slimy ones.

Are we supposed to warm to these characters? Who exactly is this movie’s target audience?

Cameron Diaz grabs a guy’s bum and when he takes offence, calls him an ‘asshole’. It is obvious that this is the film’s hero as he is tall and has twinkly eyes, and pretty soon she’s apologising, he’s apologising for having been offended at being molested and called an asshole, they’re grinning at each other stupidly and having conversations at a normal volume and apparently being able to hear each other even though they’re at a nightclub. He asks her to come to a party later that evening, and she says she might drop in. She doesn’t, and the rest of the movie is about her obsessing over him and trying to track him down, poor bastard. You can imagine how dismayed his mother will be when he ends up this white trash!

It wasn’t too long before I was seriously wondering if this was a chick flick or actually one for the guys, in disguise. Share my reasoning, if you will:

1. Gratuitous states of undress. Because of course, girls can’t wait to get naked together. It’s what we do when men aren’t around, right? We strip off and talk about men and simulate sex, and giggle. It’s not just a male fantasy, it’s actually true!

2. All the women were tall and thin and had shiny hair. Now I would have been ok with this if they had made an effort to explain why they didn’t look like normal people. Like, maybe everyone in the friendship group was a model? That would be a bit contrived, but this is a movie after all, doesn’t have to be completely realistic. A token effort at least would have been nice. As it was, it was clear they were just meant to be eye candy for the guys. A film aimed at women would surely have had characters of different shapes and sizes – though still pretty – to appeal to us and imply that we are attractive whatever shape we are (that may not necessarily be true, but it would appeal to a FEMALE audience). Skinny women acting like porn stars trying to turn men on are not sympathetic to us ladies.

In one scene, the two dumb heroines are standing in their underwear, side by side in front of a changing room mirror. They lament being 28, and wonder where all the time has gone (I could have told them, don’t worry, your brains are still adolescent). Other Chick – the one who’s not Cameron Diaz – sticks out a skeletal arm and wobbles the flap of loose skin that she has where most people have arm fat. “Look! What is that?” she cries, and the audience is presumably supposed to laugh knowingly in a moment of shared sisterhood. It was at this point I started to talk out loud to the TV set. "You call that arm fat?" - shaking an arm - "This is arm fat!" And I've had it since I was about 16. And I have a perfectly normal BMI. I guess arm fat is a sensitive subject for me.*

*Note to the director: Women do not appreciate hearing skinny bitches lament how fat they are. Trust me on this.

3. Endless crass, crude sex jokes. These were not normal women, like your friends. They were boorish men in women’s bodies. Again, male fantasy! Women who will not only tolerate your bad behaviour but join in, and you can have sex with them too!

I don’t think I have ever seen supposedly 28-year-old women act so immaturely (except perhaps around Paddington). They weren’t fun-loving. They were retarded. They must have giggled vacuously until their throats bled. Not attractive in anyone over 20.


So I think we’ve ascertained that I was Not Amused. OK, I had a couple of laughs, but that was it. I am glad the Man was in a huff at the pub because I would have found the film even more embarrassing and cringe-worthy if I’d had company. And there was nothing else to watch except black and white documentaries and stuff like that so obviously I was trapped into watching it.

I will now leave you with some suggestions of some actually good chick movies:

How to Make an American Quilt
The Color Purple
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Boys on the Side
Charlie’s Angels
Never Been Kissed
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Thelma and Louise
Clueless