victory-748-144163
Sex and the city is a pretty popular film. I put off seeing it because nothing really appealed to me to make me want to see it. I was surprised with just how... normal it is. If you're a watcher of romcom movies, this is actually quite the same ol same ol. Nothing special. If anything's different, it's that all the characters are much above average in wealth, that's all. But then again, the age of the people are above average. You don't see too many films of women almost 40 looking for love. I'm just a bit put off by the other reviews. You don't see women going to sexist films (a.k.a. 90% of all movies) ranting how underdeveloped the female character is and blahblahblah. If it's not your cup of tea, don't watch it. I'm pretty sure you KNEW it's not your cup of tea before watching it. That's why your girlfriends had to force you to watch it. Anyway, something light and nice to watch on a night in, cozy in your bed. However, nothing seems to justify the hype. I'm pretty sure the hype had more to do with the TV series (which i did not watch) than the movie. With the movie alone, it's just mehh. Good background noise while you get ready in the morning, i guess.
Sarah Jessica Parker
Fans of "Sex and the City" will love the movie version. Like the HBO series that gave birth to it, the movie is lots of fun, but it's no frivolous romp. The show's great ambition, always present, becomes even more pronounced in the movie - to document the emotional life and values of cosmopolitan women of a particular generation. It's as if its creators realized the series' significance over the course of its run, and that shift in the direction of importance - subtle, but definite - continues with this movie. Under the levity, there's a core seriousness about presenting these women's lives, one emphasized by the willingness of "Sex and the City" to grow and mature along with its characters. Those who know these characters will, of course, pick up on nuances and associations that novices will miss. Yet even viewers coming in cold will appreciate "Sex and the City" as the best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year. Indeed, at the rate Hollywood has been going, it may stand as the best women's movie until "Sex and the City II," if that ever comes along. Coming in, Michael Patrick King, the movie's writer-director, had two difficult tasks: He had to introduce the characters to a new audience without irritating fans of the show, and he had to take a series that ended perfectly and un-end it, without seeming arbitrary. He knocks off the first task easily, (re-)introducing the principals during a credits sequence narrated by the main character, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), a best-selling author in New York City. There's Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), a successful publicist with a ravenous sexual appetite. There's Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), a gentle, princess-like wife and mother. And there's Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), a lawyer and buttoned-down cynic, living in Brooklyn with her husband and son.Un-ending the perfectly ended series takes a little more time. For the first 10 minutes or so, the movie hovers in place, emphasizing (and, for first-timers, introducing) the status quot. But then, the gears gradually move into place. Four years have passed. Carrie is still seeing "Mr. Big" - whose name is now revealed to be John James Preston (Chris Noth) - and the two decide to get married. This soon turns into plans for the fashion marriage of the century, with a guest list of 200 and a gown by Vivienne Westwood. But, of course, things can't happen too smoothly. Meanwhile, Samantha is dissatisfied with her life in Los Angeles, even though she is still in love with her much-younger boyfriend, Smith (Jason Lewis), and Miranda and her impossibly sweet husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), are having marriage trouble. Though the laughs are frequent and the movie sparkles with glitz and fashion, an air of middle-aged disappointment is sometimes present, a realization of limits, of having to choose between imperfect options. Suddenly, the women are most definitely in their 40s, and so their interaction with younger women is different, sometimes long-suffering, sometimes almost motherly. Carrie takes on a personal assistant (Jennifer Hudson, who's charming) and gives her sisterly advice, the hard- earned wisdom of 20 years in the New York trenches. The mature vibe shows that "Sex and the City" is elastic and capable of bringing in new elements of women's experience. It clocks in at a hefty 145 minutes, but all that means is that it's like watching five episodes of the TV show in succession. Think of it not as a long movie but as the equivalent of an entire TV season muscled into one big mega dose. The allotment of screen time never seems obviously apportioned, but each actress gets a chance to shine. Charlotte's life is the most stable in this installment, but Davis has some of the best comic moments, and Cattrall shows a slight mellowing (and a definite deepening) in Samantha. As Miranda, Nixon is just brilliant, presenting her as someone increasingly locked into the patterns of her own personality, less hopeful and verging on bitterness. At the same time, underneath it, she's painfully sensitive. Parker is lovely, alive to every nuance of feeling, her face the film's locus of meaning. Her lack of vanity is becoming. When Carrie gets beaten up emotionally, Parker allows herself to look beat up. In one's 40s, a person doesn't take an emotional beating and wake up the next morning looking as fresh as a 20-year-old. Parker lets us see Carrie's, and her own, true face. There's something alive here. There's a feeling about this movie, that it's not some perfunctory cinematic appendix to a popular series, but the beginning of a whole new string of films. There's certainly no artistic reason "Sex and the City" can't be the women's equivalent of "Star Trek," with human emotion being the final frontier. Like outer space, that frontier is infinite.
PinkLadee
OK, I'm a little late to the party - I went to see it when it first came out, I was so excited! But here we are 8 years later, and now I cringe. Between the insulting fat jokes, Miranda turning to a block of ice, Charlotte skipping around like everything is so rosy - ugh. Carrie I was OK with - I probably would have reacted worse if that had happened to me.But what REALLY got me is how they made Big into a big, whining cry- baby. "Turn around, baby, let me see your face...." "I NEED to talk to you..." "It's just you and me, right?" COME ON!!!! For me anyway, part of his charm was that extreme confidence he exuded! Now, he's a big boo-baby. Don't even start me on SATC 2!!!
