Sex and the City [Re-view]

I’ve never been opposed to chick-flicks. I’m usually even a fan of a lot of the manly-maligned pictures. Yet, for some reason, Sex and the City was a movie that put me off conceptually. I wasn’t a fan of the television show; the times I encountered it on late night cable and tried to give it a chance, I just wasn’t impressed. Therefore taking those characters and ideas and adapting them for the screen just wasn’t of interest to me, something I was incredibly vocal about on our weekly podcast.

I think my big problem with Sex and the City came with the characters. The movie/series centers around four strong female characters. These aren’t your typical chick-flick ladies, dysfunctionally dependent on “getting the guy” or falling in love. Instead, there’s a bit more depth to them and they are a bit more rounded or “real.” Instead of presenting a character whose purpose is to have the audience fall in love with them, Sex and the City allows its characters to disturb and disgust the audience through their conversations and behavior. Even though they came first, they’re the female answer to Judd Apatow’s guy movie characters. The problem is, I like female characters I can fall in love with, while these ladies had so many negative traits I couldn’t find myself connecting with them at all.

Enter Kevin Smith. The director of films like Chasing Amy and Clerks - movies that also feature strong, rounded, and sometimes crude female characters - surprised me with a defense of both the series and the movies. It was at his suggestion that I broke down, opened my mind a little, and watched the Sex and the City movie.

As regular listeners of our podcast know, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. While the characters did initially put me off as expected, the fact that they are dynamic means they aren’t completely defined by their crudeness or saucy behavior. As the plot introduces each character and their storylines start to develop, character traits and personalities more appealing prevail. Over the course of the movie, each of the ladies suffers some sort of personal crisis, from a split marriage to being left at the altar to being tied down to one sexual partner. Okay, maybe Samantha (Kim Catrall) is defined wholly by her crudeness, but the other characters all have something that redeems them and makes the audience actually start to care about what’s going on.

The most grounded of the four is the central character, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who also carries the most emotional weight as she is on the verge of being married to her “Mr. Right,” Mr. Big, only to get so caught up in the gala affair of her wedding that she loses touch of what makes the ceremony so important - their love. Big leaves Carrie at the altar, leaving her heartbroken through a wide stretch of the movie. Parker does heartbroken well and her pain is very apparent to the audience. It makes her character sympathetic, sensitive, and grounded instead of the label-obsessed diva I expected.

What makes the Sex and the City movie even more appealing is the cinematography, directed by Michael Patrick King and shot by John Thomas. There’s quite a bit of artistry in the composition of shots and the film’s editing - something I wasn’t quite expecting from a big screen chapter of a television show. Admittedly, I still haven’t seen much of the series, so I can’t really compare the two visually, but, as a film, this is enjoyable to watch.

My surprising spin on Sex and the City still hasn’t been enough to make me tune in to the television series, where I think I might find less grounding of the characters and more of the traits that initially made me wary of the franchise. I’m also not sold that there’s enough of a story left to plumb for a sequel, not that that’s stopping them. I’m happy to continue enjoying this movie, proof that every critic needs to drop preconceived notions and watch every movie with an open mind… or that I need to listen to Kevin Smith’s recommendations more often.

-Rafe Telsch