The Sex and the City movie is interesting in so far as that it actually appears to be less than the sum of its parts. Launching large from its small screen success, Sex and the City the movie seems to have brought with it only some of the sex, and none of the sass that gave the TV series its edge.
Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda pick up where they left off, but don’t really manage to go anywhere terribly interesting in their nearly two-and-a-half hours of screen-time. Charlotte continues to enjoy marital bliss, Miranda is a bitch to Steve who then cheats on her, Samantha becomes dissatisfied with monogamy, and Carrie plays out a predictable rocky road with Big.
The writing by Michael Patrick King (who also directs) is disappointingly lazy and far tamer than what we’ve come to expect from the TV series.You’ll be hard pressed to find the fun euphemisms and bitchy barbs bandied around a table littered with cocktails in downtown Manhattan that gave the show its backbone.
With the scattershot plot seeming to take place over the better part of a decade, there was plenty of opportunity for King to include pointless cameos from every minor recurring character to please the fans whilst stringing out the four weak storylines. But I’m sure that all the dresses were nice and the shoes to die for.
The inclusion late in the piece of Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) as Carrie’s plucky new assistant, with her head full of dreams and her heart full of love, felt tacked-on and disingenuous. I half expected her to break into a ballad during one of her earnest lingering stares into the middle distance.
As an occasional fan of the TV series it’s unfortunate to see that the four-year gestation period for the film has produced a Sex and the City that is safe, predictable, and like sex with your sister - ultimately unsatisfying. The sequel has already been greenlit.
Sex and the City rates 1 over-cooked star.
