My favourite line from all the reviews I've read of SEX AND THE CITY comes from Slant magazine. "The Sex and the City movie wouldn't be a Sex and the City movie without the horseshit—and at two-and-a-half hours, there's lots of it here." All I can say is, I concur!I was never a fan of the series. And all these reviews by men saying "I'm not the target audience" are irritating me because they seem to be letting the movie off the hook. What they're saying is, "I don't get it, but maybe her in-doors will, so maybe I should pretend the jury's still out when in reality the verdict's in and it's the chair."
I didn't like SEX AND THE CITY because it didn't ring true. I couldn't relate. I have a bunch of female friends and we were/are single, high-earners who love shopping and hope for love, but "Love and Labels" did not make up the entirety of our lives. The TV show was praised for being candid and "pushing the envelope" about how female sexuality and friendship were presented on screen. Maybe so, but I still found the result reductionist and vaguely insulting. So the movie is just more of the same. More vapid consumerism, more unrealistic relationships and more adolescent humour and generally intolerable teenage behaviour. Presumably, fans of the TV series will be in heaven.
A few words about the translation of SEX AND THE CITY from the small screen to the big screen. In terms of substance the movie feels like a bunch of episodes strung together. The characters haven't really developed at all - same old problems with the possible exception of Miranda who gets a half-decent grown-up storyline. The film-makers try to make the product more politically correct by including an African-American character. Frankly this late inclusion in such a minor role merely highlights, rather than addresses, the show's narrow focus. Finally, there has been no attempt to change the look of the movie for the big screen. Fans will presumably approve. I, however, wished they'd actually bothered to exploit the extra possibilities the big screen gives you.
SEX AND THE CITY is released this weekend in the UK, US, Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Singapore, Iceland, Italy and Turkey. It opens on the weekend of June 6th in Egypt, Belgium, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, Portugal, South Korea, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway. It opens on June 12th in Argentina and the Netherlands; on June 20th in Russia, Spain, Taiwan and Sweden; on June 17th in Chile; on June 27th in Venezuela and on August 2nd in Japan.
