I wish that I
could claim to be some sort of an authority on Carrie Bradshaw
and—hold on for a second while I look up their names—Samantha
Jones and Charlotte York and Miranda Hobbes. The now-infamous
quartet’s HBO-show “Sex and the City” began airing when I was
nine and finished when I was fifteen. To say the least, the
program wasn’t exactly appropriate for my eyes when it
originally graced and excited those of so many others, nor was
it available to me at any time before I had to go to bed for the
evening. In the years that have followed the series’ finale, I
can’t say have that I ever felt the urge to watch re-reruns of
episodes on TBS or the WB, either. Alas, why I have a strange
desire to understand the mythology and the history behind
“Sex and the City” somewhat escapes me. But I do.
Perhaps the
aforementioned compulsion derives itself from the fact that I
admire the heck out of Michael Patrick King, one of the show’s
creators, producers, and directors and the brainchild behind
this film-continuation of the series. It’s possible that when I
account for the fact that I don’t really like what King
has done with the material artistically—at least as far as the
movie-adaptation of the story is concerned—I want all the more
to find a level on which I can understand it. He’s a talented
and entirely respectable businessman, one who understood the
desires of an audience and smartly sold this audience a product
that he was confident that they would respond to. With this
knowledge in mind and honest sensibilities in tow, I really wish
I could enjoy the product more. The man is clearly
a genius, but I sure wish he was a genius whose work I actually
liked.
Then again,
King has essentially, with this film, done for the
female-demographic what Tyler Perry has done for the
African-American community time and time again, and I have never
sought to “understand” Perry’s works in the way that I do Sex
and the City: The Movie. In fact, that comparison seems all
the more perplexing when I consider the fact that I can
sympathize a lot more with Perry’s Madea than I can with Sarah
Jessica Parker’s Carrie, Kim Cattrall’s Samatha, Kristin Davis’
Charlotte, or even Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda. After all—offensive
to the show’s diehards as this suggestion may be—the ladies of
“Sex in the City” are ultimately a bunch of pampered snobs who
deserve every bit of the farfetched melodrama that King’s
carefully-planned plot throws at them. That Carrie has trouble
marrying longtime boyfriend Mr. Big (Chris North) from the show
in the movie is the least of my emotional-concerns. I view
Samantha’s sexual dysfunctions, Charlotte’s dissatisfaction in
her own happiness, and Miranda’s marital problems—all of which
are explored during Sex and the City’s whopping
140-minute duration—with the same ambivalence.
So, once again,
I return to the puzzling question that I posed in the first
paragraph: Why am I so fascinated by the existence of “Sex and
the City” and its filmic counterpart? Over the short course of
this review, I have come to realize that my fascination must be
connected to what I did find alluring about the picture:
the addictive cocktail that King blends of straight-up vapidity
and pulpy style. I will admit, there were passages of Sex and
the City that I responded to, most of them high-octane
montages that carried a distinctly fun quality to them. Despite
the utterly empty nature of these, I found uncanny enjoyment in
their spirit, something that I am rarely able to do with
most other romantic-comedies. The offbeat juxtaposition of
cookie-cutter conventionality and tonal exhilaration on display
is sort of electrifying. Its presence in the film may not have
left me fulfilled enough to recommend the film as I left the
screening, but perhaps I subconsciously believed the notion
that, had I grasped the complete background and followed the
characters’ ups and downs over the years, I would’ve enjoyed
this Sex and the City more. I suppose that, indeed, I
kinda-sorta realized what fans saw in the material, but was
frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t quite capture enough of
the greater picture to really get their enchantment.
Or maybe I’m
over-thinking the matter. It’s possible that the $100+ million
worth of tickets the movie will sell internationally will be
bought mostly by bubble-gum-popping airheads who think the
Sex and the City quartet is comprised of four thoroughly
admirable women who couldn’t drink enough cosmopolitans or sleep
with enough men. But I have too much faith in humanity to think
this way. I’ll stick with believing that Sex in the City
works for so many people because it appeals to their senses;
full of expensive clothes and colorful drinks, flashy edits and
crisp dialogue, enthusiastic actresses and groomed men, it
offers enough jazzy style to capture a viewer’s imagination. In
fact, I’m comfortable recognizing it as a sex-filled fairy-tale
tailored perfectly for the Modern Adult American Woman.
Fan of the show
or not, however, don’t go into the movie expecting surprises.
Distributors New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. were blowing a lot
of unwarranted smoke when vocally demanding that critics not
give away any of the film’s “plot secrets” before its release.
As one who has never watched an episode of the series before,
even I could predict every direction in which the story was
headed miles before it began to veer there. For even the most
ardent of admirers of the film to see it as anything more than a
full-season’s worth of episodes strung together into the
skeleton of a motion-picture would be foolish. It seems that we
will all have to wait for the inevitable Sex and the City 2
to have a chance to really be wowed by anything resembling a
shocking-twist. Hell, maybe by that picture’s release I will
even have refined my murky idea of why I seem to care so much
about a product as inconclusive and as throwaway as Sex in
the City in the first place.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 5.30.2008
Screened on:
5.30.2008 at the Krikorian Vista Village Metroplex 15 in Vista,
CA.
Sex and the City is rated R and runs
145 minutes.
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