Cameron Diaz: America’s spaz-heart

Sarah
I feel like she’s already fallen back on that persona, though — not so much the burpy guy’s-girl part of it, specifically, but the dorky part. She played a charming squawky karaoke spaz in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”; she played a charming dim-witted dancing spaz in “Charlie’s Angels.” She’s gotten a lot of mileage out of her willingness to frug in her underpants, style her hair with semen, and otherwise make a fool out of herself (insert “Feeling Minnesota” joke here).

But it’s getting old. It’s already old off-screen; I don’t begrudge her the ability to eat as many cheese fries as she wants, and if she’s passing gas left and right, good for her (no, seriously…hee!), but I don’t need to hear about it anymore, either. And onscreen, we’ve seen it done; she can’t get much more mileage out of it.

I think Diaz might gravitate toward goofier roles because they make her less threatening and more relatable, but I also think it’s time she took bitchier parts — not just because she’s in danger of typecasting herself, à la Meg Ryan, as America’s spaz-heart, but because she’s actually really good at bitchy parts. She played a bitch on wheels in “Any Given Sunday”; Christina Pagniacci is a wholly unsympathetic character (with some hilariously overwrought dialogue), and Diaz rocked it.

Tara
Yeah, maybe that’s the ticket. I haven’t seen “Very Bad Things,” but I hear that her performance there, as a WASP-nightmare bridezilla, was quite enjoyable.

Sarah
I did see it, unfortunately, but Diaz did indeed make an enjoyably hateable ‘zilla.

Tara
And if Diaz is not, in fact, a rotten bitch in real life — and, indeed, all evidence points to her being a delightful young woman — then that’s about as far as I care to see her stretch as an artist. Because I did see “Gangs of New York,” and…wow. She was just awful — completely overmatched both by the period material and by her co-stars. Marty, for real, it’s fine if you think Cameron Diaz is hot, but putting the cutie-pie ex-model up against Daniel Day-Freaking-Lewis is just cruel.

Fortunately, Diaz herself seems to have twigged that “Gangs” was kind of a failed experiment as far as she was concerned and is sticking closer to standard chick-movie roles — even in a superior chick movie, as “In Her Shoes” looks to be.

Sarah
I don’t plan to see “In Her Shoes”; I like Toni Collette a lot, and maybe it’s just the General-Foods-International-Coffee-y marketing campaign, but…the movie looks annoying. But if Diaz plays a big juicy bitch in it, I’ll go see it; I don’t love chick movies, but I do like a good villain.

Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting are co-creators and co-editors of Television Without Pity.

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