I will be an abnormal man when I admit that I have always enjoyed [amazonify]B001DDBCUU::text::::Sex and the City[/amazonify] when it was a television show on HBO. I realize it was about four women and thus often put it in the realm of being too femmy for the average man. But the show itself was smart, whitty, emotional, and funny. At the end of the day, the show was just good. Plus there was nudity and honestly what self-respecting man doesn’t like that.
So when I first heard they would be getting back together for a movie I was happy. I didn’t feel that it was a bad time for the show to end. They had run the gambit on what they could do in a television format. A movie however allows you to do a whole lot more since you can have the audience for nearly two hours instead of the 30-45 minute bursts.
But while the movie had a lot of promise in its premise, it just didn’t turn out quite right. Instead of being smart and witty, it was dumbed down and down right punny. It was emotional, but it was rarely funny. The humor in the show dipped to dick and fart jokes (literally) which may work for Kevin Smith from time to time (though I don’t like when he over does it even) but it doesn’t seem to work with the normally classy jokes that are often here. And heaven forbid you were hoping for nudity because the nudity dropped out of the movie almost entirely.
The writing itself seemd rather half-assed. While the show had always been emotional, like I said, but this one almost seemed over emotional. When Big predictably called her on her wedding to attempt to break it off, instead of talking him through his hardships like I think she normally would have considering who she was, she went the route of a high school drama queen dropping the phone on the ground and screaming at her friends to get her out of here. Apparently completely unable to walk on her own.
The phone itself turned out to be an oddly big deal as they showed it traveling in slow motion throughout the movie in various points in time, highlighting the bad direction. These moments often got some of the larger laughs that I had throughout the entire film, which I’m not sure if that was the point. I would hope not.
Consumerism was king in the movie, and while style was always important to Carrie, at no point does it seem to dominate her life more than here. Everything was about her buying things. Even her love seemed confirmed by Big buying her a large closet. Apparently that is how one truly shows love to another in this series now. I would also say that I did always think the clothes were fairly good, but here they were down right hideous most of the time. The designers should be flogged for what they did.
The movie was surely disappointing, and I hope they decide against making another. I bet they will because the amount of money the movie made is hard to turn away. Just look at George Lucas and Indiana Jones and Star Wars. I’m sure there will be more, which is unfortunate. This series should have stayed as a positive memory of television greatness.
I give it a D.