Thursday, June 26, 2008

Sex and the City - Meh!


Last night I finally got to see the movie of Sex and the City with of my really good girlfriends, and I have to say that I am kind of disappointed. The movie was over 2 hours but nothing really happened and certainly nothing that you couldn't have predicted before you see the movie. It almost seemed like a paint by numbers version.

The movie picks up 3 years after the series ended and Big and Carrie are still living in seperate apartments, which I found totally weird. Then Carrie gets all weirded out after they go to an auction at Christie's because the woman who's life is being auctioned got dumped by her long term boyfriend and had no where to go because he owned their apartment. So of course, Carrie decides that she has to help Big who is a gazillionaire purchase their snazzy new Fifth Avenue penthouse and he proposes.

Was anyone who saw this movie surprised that Big got cold feet? I have to admit that it did play into their history since he dumped her like 4 times during the series. It just seemed so expected and I had a hard time with the fact that they never sat down and talked about why they were having a big wedding. I mean Big had been married twice and Carrie never. If Carrie had just said, this is going to be my only wedding and I love you and I want to celebrate it, I could get behind it, but they seemed to have communication problems.

And Miranda and Steve? First of all, I think having Steve cheat on Miranda was ridiculous. I would have understood it more if he just get fed up with the way that she treated him as well as Magda. She always seemed to belittle him in the series. I found Miranda extremely dislikable in the movie.

Charlotte, of course, her life is perfect. She has the perfect understanding husband, the perfect adorable daughter who is a miniature Charlotte, and the perfect new baby (I'm hoping that little Rose takes after Harry). Oh and perfect dogs. The only not perfect is when she gets Montezuma's revenge in Mexico. That was hilarious and totally unexpected. It's pretty much the only unexpected thing in the whole movie.

I know the movie is about wish fulfillment really. I mean who would want to see Carrie, after her break-up with Big, having to find a brand new apartment and iscovering that with the real estate market the way it is, she can now only afford a studio with no closet space? Although it would have been hilarious to see Carrie have to deal with some real life issues. Instead, she gets to buy her apartment back, and apparently she now has enough money to afford an assistant played by Jennifer Hudson, who was totally wasted in this movie.

Her character of Louise, is sappy and saintly but who has great taste in bags. How I wished at this point that Wanda Sykes had been hired to play Carrie's assistant, someone with some sass and verve. It was just too cute that St. Louise from St. Louis gave her Meet Me in St. Louis for a Christmas present.

I finally realized towards the end that the point of the movie is not the plot, the point is the 4 women and their friendship. How despite distance and time, they are all still good friends, and they all seem to have endless amounts of time to hang out with each other, despite kids and work and all the other muck that comes along in life. They are there for each other through good times and bad. Who wouldn't want to have 3 friends who will drop everything to go with you on your Mexican honeymoon after you've been dumped? That's really what the movie is celebrating, women loving and taking care of each other.

Which is why the series was such a success and why so many women have flocked to see the movie with their friends. Yes, the movie and the TV series was a fantasy about living in New York and being single, but the thread was always the fabulous friendships. I know I used to watch the show and wish that I could get together with my female friends as often as they do, instead of spending endless amounts of time scheduling and rescheduling because we are all so busy.
So I would have to give the movie an A for friendship but a B- for everything else.

P.S. Was anyone else amazed at how Big turned that tiny closet into that huge walk-in?

2 comments:

Kwana said...

Oh E, I'm sorry you didn't like the movie. I love it but I know it was about the friendships from the beginning. It was never about the guys it was always about the girls and the shoes.

Elizabeth Kerri Mahon said...

I just felt that after 4 years of waiting, the writers could have come up with something better than they did. I did enjoy the fashion and the female bonding, but at times I felt like everyone was sleep walking through parts of it.