Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls WERE made of.

Wiggles and giggles and everything shallow, that's what little girls ARE made of.

That is according to the screwball comedy The Sweetest Thing and it's written by a woman, so she should know.

Nancy M. Pimental, a writer for TV's South Park, has taken the time-honoured women's comedy and turned it on its ear by overloading it with bathroom humour.

She wants it to be a kind of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion meets There's Something About Mary.

A not-so-sweet little farce about a couple of not-so-innocent single gals trying to find Mr. Right amongst the throngs of Mr. Wrongs.

Christina Walters (Cameron Diaz) and her best friend Courtney Rockliffe (Christina Applegate) are blissfully happy teasing and seducing the errant male population of San Francisco.

They are the aggressors.

Christina and Courtney go to the clubs, dance up a storm, and taunt as many men as possible before they choose the one to take to bed.

Their friend Jane (Selma Blair), who is looking for a husband, if not exactly a meaningful relationship, keeps getting her heart broken.

On the very night Christina and Courtney decide to teach Jane the error of her ways, Christina bumps into Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane).

He's in the club with his obnoxious lout brother Roger (Jason Bateman) rounding up fast, eager, intoxicated women for a stag orgy.

Christina is instantly and inexplicably smitten with Peter, probably because he initially brushes her off.

After she has an erotic dream about his love-making techniques, Christina and Courtney decide to crash his brother's wedding in a nearby town.

Their little road trip is fraught with crazy sexual escapades. They're marginally funny because they're smutty without being down-right vulgar.

The Sweetest Thing pretends the Sex And The City generation of women are just as crude, rude and voraciously obsessed with sex as men.

It's just a ruse.

In the end, it still maintains no woman can be really happy on her own and any man is better than no man.

Jane settles for a guy whose endowment is greater than his IQ, while Courtney falls for a sweet, timid guy.

Worst of all, Christina settles for Peter, whose girlfriend (Parker Posey) rejects him for some guy whose Internet chat turns her on more than he does.

If it stuck with the women-in-control theme, The Sweetest Thing would have made a powerful statement and been a great comic twist, but director Roger Kumble tags on the safest and silliest of traditional endings.

Diaz, Applegate, Blair and Posey are suitably kooky which should appeal to women and they strip down often enough to keep men alert, if not amused. (More on: The Sweetest Thing).

(This film is rated AA)

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