I must confess I’ve barely seen the HBO hit upon which this is based, but I can see the appeal. On the one hand, the series is a seriocomic fantasy about four wealthy Manhattan women who shop a lot, date a variety of eligible (and occasionally ineligible) gentlemen, and have frank conversations whose main subject is the one in the title. (For a series about women, it was largely a series about men, notwithstanding hedonistic Samantha’s brief same-sex experimentation.) Yet there’s some reality too; the series brought up all manner of relationship issues, many familiar and a few, like “funky spunk,” that may or may not be a problem for many viewers. But mainly, the appeal lies in having well-delineated characters, sometimes-clever writing, and an emphasis on the rarely challenged friendship among the women.
The movie version, written and directed by frequent series contributor Michael Patrick King, apparently without the involvement of series creator Darren Star, contains all of these threads, yet tends to the melancholy side. Suiting the transition from TV show to feature film, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has completed the transition from columnist to book author, just like her real-life alter-ego Candace Bushnell, but still provides pithy voiceovers. (“A knockoff isn’t easy to spot when it comes to love.”) Her possibly impending marriage to Chris Noth’s “Mr. Big” provides the framework for the film. A parade of wedding dresses Carrie gets to try on should serve as fashion porn for those whose interests lie in that direction. There’s another trying-on montage scene later, which had me looking at my watch.
For those of a different inclination, Samantha’s (Kim Catrall) escapades in the series had provided titillation and male eye candy. It’s unfortunate that for most of this movie her libido is sidelined, and so is she, having moved to LA in an attempt at monogamy that may be as frustrating for the viewer as it is for her. Perky Charlotte (Kristin Davis), wife and mother to an adopted three-year-old, mostly serves as a foil for the other characters, leaving the most compelling subplot to high-strung Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whose husband confesses to cheating after they’ve not slept together for six months. Hence more melancholy, but Miranda’s trust issues are easier to relate to than Carrie’s.
I won’t give away why exactly it takes over two hours before we find out whether Carrie and Big will marry after all, but to me the thing that keeps them apart is basically trivial and arguably phony. Critics have often called the series and its characters shallow, but others found it shallow and fun. Shallow and dour is not so appealing. I wouldn’t mind watching Carrie mope in Mexico, as she does when things seem to sour, so much if this storyline were better and not built around the conventional dilemma of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married. Not to say there aren’t some lighter moments. An early scene in which the four women comically use coloring with crayons as a sexual metaphor, due to the presence of Charlotte’s young daughter, has the right feel to it, at once funny and truthful. The scenes with Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie’s newly hired assistant, also have that balance between lightness and seriousness that is sometimes missing elsewhere.
The theme of the movie is forgiveness, and I’m sure most longtime fans will forgive its flaws, but notice them. (Newcomers don’t need to have seen the series to follow along.) After seeing the feature I went and watched a whole episode—the one where Charlotte meets her future husband (Evan Handler)—and enjoyed that at least as much.
IMDB link
viewed 5/30/08 at Moorestown
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