Sex and the City, the movie, feels like a glorified television episode in the best possible sense — utterly unchanged in spirit from its small screen roots yet just ambitious enough to validate its big screen adaptation. For the uninitiated, the film is unlikely to inspire, but for fans of the Emmy-winning HBO series, I can confidently guarantee that you will come away indisputably delighted.
Sex and the City picks up four years from where the finale left off. “Sexual anthropologist” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and long-time, off again/on again boyfriend Mr. Big (Chris Noth) are hunting for that perfect Manhattan apartment; prickly Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is still stuck in Brooklyn juggling a career, husband Steve (David Eigenberg) and five-year-old son; eternal optimist Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and husband Harry (Evan Handler) are the blissful, Park Avenue ensconced, adoptive parents of a cherubic Chinese toddler; and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) now lives in Los Angles, managing the career of actor boyfriend Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis).
One by one, each couple confronts a profound challenge to the structural integrity of their relationships (if you wish to remain completely spoiler free, skip the remainder of this paragraph): Big proposes to Carrie but then leaves her at the altar, Steve cheats on Miranda, Charlotte gets pregnant, and Samantha questions why she ever embraced monogamy. I won’t say more. I’ve probably said too much already. Suffice it to say, when the going gets though, the fab foursome turn to each other for the solace and strength that has always seen them through even the most melodramatic of episodes.
Sex and the City was HBO’s most popular and critically acclaimed prime time series. For six seasons, the show brought Candace Bushnell’s provocative, bestselling book of the same name to life, transforming the series into a chic and sexy, trend-setting phenomenon. Just when the show’s shameless materialism, vulgar self-indulgence and wanton promiscuousness became too much to bear, or the overdependence on and objectification of men (not that it wasn’t a very deserved role reversal) wore dreadfully thin, the core theme of friendship above everything — more than hunks and handbags — always saved the day.
Watching Sex and the City is like spending a night on the town with your dearest girlfriends. It’s wonderful to see the colorful quartet back together again, in spite of, or, perhaps, because of the usual set of quirks, eccentricities and neuroses. Confronting the ups and downs of love, the reality of middle age and the necessity of forgiveness, Sex and the City goes to a darker place than we’re used to. Just because one lives in a fairy tale doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. There is a child-like fragility to the characters this time around, especially Parker’s Carrie, that we have never seen before.
The film introduces a new character in Louise (Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson of Dreamgirls), Carrie’s personal assistant. While Hudson is a beautiful compliment to the story, her presence — more Hattie McDaniel than social equal — reveals how embarrassingly monochrome the series has always been.
On the bright side, Sex and the City delivers the goods in terms of campy sexual escapades and materialistic overkill. There is the usual parade of haute couture, garish handbags and phosphorescent shoes. Designers must have fallen all over themselves to get their merchandise into the hands and onto the bodies of the leads.
At nearly two and a half hours, Sex and the City is overlong and could have used some significant tightening. But the show’s longtime executive producer, Michael Patrick King, who also wrote and directed the film, nonetheless perfectly captures the original’s essence. For purists, there is not a false note in it.
© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
