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Friday, May 30, 2008
Sex and the City: A he said/she said review
When would a man ever find it awkward to be surrounded by hundreds of women? When he’s at the premiere of the Sex and the City movie.
To gain a better sense of perspective (and because I like to be a nice guy), I invited two of my colleagues who are ardent Sex and the City fans to see the movie with me. While they pored over an Entertainment Weekly spread of male SATC costars, I played my own game of “spot the guy,” counting about a dozen males in the audience.
Thankfully, the movie made me glad to be there, even if it did wear out its welcome with a running time of nearly two and a half hours. Fans will be pleased that the spirit of the show is very much intact, but that’s one of the movie’s problems: it’s too much like the TV show.
I know very well this movie was made to please the fans, but even so, when a TV show moves to the movie theater, filmmakers should heighten the experience.Writer-director Michael Patrick King didn’t go far enough in this regard, making essentially a Very Special Episode that happens to play on a very big screen.
Some people will say that the movie is like a 2.5 hour episode, but I thought it felt more like five 30-minute episodes that had been inelegantly jammed together. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) prepares for her nuptials with Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) endures marriage difficulties. The randy Samantha (Kim Cattrall) finds herself questioning her new life in Los Angeles managing the career of actor-boyfriend Jerry “Smith” Jerrod. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is the most content of the bunch, settled into her Park Avenue life with husband Harry and their adopted daughter, Lily, when she gets a long-desired surprise.
I most enjoyed Carrie and Miranda’s stories, which had the most dramatic weight. It helped that their plotlines, about their men making colossal mistakes, intertwined. It helped even more that I related to these stories, because I’ve been that guy who’s screwed up and was desperate to be forgiven.
Charlotte’s and Samantha’s stories felt isolated and not nearly as compelling. Another disappointment was Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) who plays a new PA for Carrie. Her performance is OK, but her character was so thinly written it felt like padding in a film that already has too much bloat.
What held the movie together, though, is what propelled the TV show more than anything else: the electric chemistry between the four leads. They’re always fun to watch, especially when all four share a scene. Parker is particularly good, turning in what may be her best performance on a screen of any size. If open-minded men get dragged to this, they just might come out not wanting to slit their wrists.
My Grade: B
Although I am not anti-Sex and the City and I don’t retch at chick flicks, I recognize that Sex and the City has a very specific audience that I don’t exactly fall into. So I thought it only fair to let my SATC-loving co-workers, Meagan Engle and Megan Gildow, offer their take:
Just a day after seeing the movie, we both found ourselves wanting to see it again or wishing it was already out on DVD (to accompany the six seasons already in our cache.)
The best part of the movie is just seeing the four friends again. It’s like a reunion for serious fans of the show. The four leading ladies’ chemistry remains fabulously intact and really, that’s what made us all love the series in the first place, not the veritable revolving door of men or the outrageous conversations.
While Sir Critic is certainly right that Carrie and Miranda’s stories were more dramatic, true fans of the show will be pleased with the plot lines for Charlotte and Samantha as well.
As for the length, we didn’t find it to be an issue - even after spending half an hour wishing someone would stab premiere footage host Steven Cocojaru with a sharp stiletto and put us out of our misery. But once the opening bars of the theme song started to play and we were absolutely sure it wasn’t a ringtone false alarm, our hearts started to sing along.
The only problem we had with the movie was the addition of minor character Louise, portrayed by Jennifer Hudson. She seemed to serve very little purpose to the plot and in the hey-dey of the show, her role in Carrie’s emotional well-being would definitely have been filled by Charlotte, Miranda or Samantha or even all three.
If you are a fan of the show, you won’t be disappointed.
Our grade: A+
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