Sex and the City

I saw the Sex and the City movie yesterday.  With someone who liked it more than I did.  :)

It's hard for me to understand why people are enjoying this movie.  It's all very unhappy.  The characters are all very unhappy, their friends don't really seem to ever make them feel better, and the point of the story seems to be that love is the ultimate goal, because being single is terrible, but, wait, love is terrible too, because men are terrible, and so every option is terrible, and so life is just terrible regardless.  But at least you can laugh when your friend has diarrhea and can't get to a bathroom in time.  I have no objection to potty humor -- there's potty humor in most of the things I write -- but here it's just a bizarre choice for the writer to make.  This is the funniest thing you can come up with?  You have a world of opportunities here, you can set up any sort of funny, clever, relatable scenario you want, and you're going to spend real time in your movie dealing with the comedy of diarrhea?  There are movies where the juxtaposition of highbrow and lowbrow humor work.  This is not one of them.  This is a writer making stupid choices.

It's not just about the random potty humor.  What frustrated me the most about the movie is that it's built on completely shoddy plot-work.  Both of the main storylines -- I'm trying not to spoil here -- are the kinds of things that could easily be resolved in five minutes.  If I was desperate to talk to someone and she wasn't picking up her phone, it might cross my mind that maybe she doesn't have her phone with her.  Or that the ringer's turned off.  And so I might call someone else she knows -- like, maybe one of the three friends permanently attached to her side -- and try to reach her that way.  Or I might actually try to find her in person.  You know, instead of doing something that will obviously screw things up irreparably.  (And, similarly, if I were the girl, maybe I'd take a deep breath and try to figure out what's going on before I start doing dramatic and drastic things.  You know, because I'm not a three-year-old.)  So we have two people who actually do want the same thing, and love each other, but we need unbelievable plot machinations to keep them apart for a couple of hours -- literally, a couple of hours.  This is the slowest moving plot engine ever.  The movie feels like it's twelve hours long, and that's pretty much how long it actually is.  The other main storyline?  How about throwing the viewer a few more details so we can really understand what the transgressions was, and let us see them fight about it instead of just pulling them apart.  Characters who are kept away from each other and not allowed to address problems are, to me, less interesting than characters who have to deal with things.  Two hours of keep-away does not make for a fun movie.  To me.  Two hours of "let's distract the audience with poop jokes and fill time before we actually address what's going on with the characters" is a pain to sit through.

But all this is nitpicky, because it assumes I actually cared what was going on with the characters, and I didn't.  These are four unpleasant people, living unpleasant lives, and treating each other -- and the cardboard-cutout men in their lives -- fairly unpleasantly.  They also don't do anything besides complain to each other.  No one works, no one engages in any activities at all, no one has any responsibilities, no one has any family members, and no one goes to the bathroom except the one who poops in her pants.

This movie has nothing real to say about anything.  It has nothing real to say about women, men, love, work, money, sex, New York City, modern society, culture, or diarrhea.  It is a waste of a writer's opportunity to have a point of view, to add something to the world, to be funny or interesting or compelling or even just entertaining.  To actually bother trying to make a good movie.  This is a purely commercial play -- how much money can we make selling garbage to an existing audience that will go see a Sex and the City movie regardless of whether it's any good.  I can't fault them for making it, or releasing it, or promoting it, because clearly there is this audience for it, and it's earning an incredible amount of money.  But it's stupid, and way too long, and seriously lacking.

End of rant.

Comments

[mmk080]

Why would u go to that movie anyway? I mean... its Sex & the City.

U know... I saw an episode the other day on tv whilst flicking through the channels and there was a whole 5-10 minute scene where three girls were literally talking about penises whilst holding giant dildos and eating in a public restaurant... Now, I am all for womens empowerment protrayed on tv (and well, women's empowerment generally) but this is even more far-fetched than star-trek.

I just don't understand how women like this type of movie or show. But then again, I've never understood how women like anything, so it's all good.

[Jessica M]

Jeremy - I totally agree about this movie actually! People say the show (and movie) are about women's empowerment, but I don't see that at all. What I see is four immature, materialistic, narcissistic women who act like children well into their forties, and think it's cute. But I still went to see it. ;)

Great to see you and your fiancee at reunions!

[Jennifer]

Amen. I watched the show a couple of times (incidentally, my bf is the fan of SATC and wanted me to watch it) and found it entertaining enough but pretty devoid of substance.

[Jen]

Thanks for this Jeremy. The series was pretty good (not as sublime as the Bushnell NYO columns)and Season 6 especially was extraordinary re character development,plot pacing, lighting, casting, set choice(Petrovsky's loft downtown!) near perfection in the annals of television.

I had resolved not to see the movie so it wouldn't interfere with my ongoing enjoyment of the series- ending but went on an impulse and emerged numb - and later, deeply regretful, took a long walk of shame to a post-movie cab. It was like meeting a good friend after not seeing her for some years - one who had had some admittedly unattractive qualities (which you'd happily overlooked because she was such fun) which were framed in high relief after the passage of time and whose materialistic, banal, mortifying self-indulgence made you realize that there was no chance of an enduring friendship.

Biggest revelation for this reader(putting aside Big's unspeakably cruel wedding action and Carrie's inexplicable, unforgivable decision to take him back after a humiliation of such vast proportions)was discovering that Big was no longer a prize - after 10 years he was irretrievably tarnished, too old, too unattractive, too controlling, too much.

[patrick]

i noticed that Sex and the City has a polarizing effect on both men and women... people either love the movie or they hate it

[The Narcissist]

Really? I really liked the film. I thought it was worth the $10 movie voucher I got from the firm. The whole point of the movie was WOMEN and FASHION. I understand that it may not be as fun watching the film for the blokes. Plotwise it is true it had weaknesses. But trust me in a cinema full of women who were just excited to see the characters from SATC onscreen again and wearing Fancy clothes that no one in real life would ever wear, no one really cared about the plot or there lack of.

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