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.
juneebuggy
A guilty favourite for sure. I remember the first time I saw this being surprised by how good it was. I went in not expecting much as I didn't think there was enough material based on a simple TV show to warrant a two and half hour long movie about shoes and sex. But this sucked me right in with surprising depth to all the converging stories of the girls (and their boys) while covering a host of real life issues.My only problem would be the excessive wealth all the characters seem to have amassed "that pillow cost 400 dollars", the apartment Big buys and outfits with a gynormous closet, Carrie's Vera Wang wedding dress, her new assistant. It was fantastical, which may have been just the point. This is a fantasy.Ultimately if you're a fan of the HBO series than you will love this, its funny, sad, frustrating and will have you cheering with some great HEA's (although I wouldn't have been able to forgive ---...again, but what a moment) 12.30.13
Jordan Hunt
'Sex And The City: The Movie' takes place four years after the female foursome finally found themselves and each other in the heart of the Big Apple. While they've moved much further apart in terms of location, as friends they are as close as they ever were.Discussing her legal rights to a penthouse apartment John Prescott, aka Mr. Big, pays for as the couple's home, Carrie casually agrees with John to marry in order to protect her own assets. The wedding is planned to be subtle, but Carrie's minor celebrity status rouses the city of New York, and the ceremony soon exceeds anything remotely near subtle. As the big day looms, Carrie and John's relationship is once again put under enough strain to push to them back to the breaking point.The scene is set for a soul searching character drama worthy of any great episode from the series, but at this point in the character's arcs, their behaviour and actions all too often seem regressive. Carrie and Miranda receive the lion's share of the plot threads, but Carrie still hasn't learn to read between the lines, and Miranda forgets the pain she suffered when she nearly lost her partner the last time she alienated him. Samantha and Charlotte don't face as much strife, and therefore remain more true to the development they achieved during the series' run. It simply becomes hard to sympathise with these characters when we watched them learn their mistakes throughout six years, only to endure the pain of watching the girls repeat them. That being said, is this necessarily a negative? My overall opinion of the show, without prompting accusations of sexism, is that it wasn't really a proponent of feminism so much as it was a depiction of the mistakes women repeatedly made when it came to men. Bearing that in mind, the movie essentially does honour the characters well.The fashion the show was noted for is given is its own starring role in the movie, with an extensive wardrobe of expensive couture and famous names. Though this does skew its demographic more towards females exclusively, it certainly is fascinating to look at.'Sex And The City: The Movie' doesn't quite break the television adaptation mould of playing like a (severely) extended episode, but if it was an episode of the beloved show, it would certainly be among the most acclaimed.
mylo2222
the 13th labour of hercules.so, i'm guessing the reason they made this was for money; why then, in the name of all that is holy, did it have to be 140mins. i could, if summing up all my courage, take 87mins, but 140???????? really?????? what did they have to do that needed that long? get in the product placements, talk about shoes, eat some ice-cream and we're done. i checked my watch after 11mins and felt my heart sink, after 17mins i was ready to throw myself, in sweet sacrifice, at the screen just to make it stop.hell does not scare me: i have spent 140mins somewhere far more tortuous.
