Sex and the City (**3/4)

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

Knocked Up (***1/4)

With this movie, writer-director Judd Apatow establishes himself as a force to elevate the slob comedy to something an adult audience can both laugh at and relate to. As with his previous effort, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Apatow surrounds what Newsweek calls a “beta male” hero with a group of friends enjoying an extended adolescence and forces him to grow up.

Apatow’s avatar of maturation here is Seth Rogen, the shaggy veteran of Apatow ventures dating back to the beloved (by me, at least) Fox series Freaks and Geeks. A chance hookup with an out-of-his league TV producer (Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl) leads to a sudden grow-up call when she becomes…expectant.

Rogen capabably handles the part of the slacker-cum-family man, and Heigl was a revelation. Did I believe they were a couple falling in love? No, I didn’t, and nor is there is it clear why no one ever brings up either abortion or adoption. The movie also feels a little longish; its segmented approach seems like it might have suited for an episodic, short-run sitcom. But even if you you don’t buy these two as a couple, you can probably understand them. The movie is full of tremendously funny punch lines that seem like things that the characters would actually say.

The other couple in the movie, played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (as the sister of Heigl’s character), is also worth mentioning. Unlike the slacker posse, they function as something more than comic relief or sidekicks. They’ve got a long-running marriage that seems to still be a day-to-day negotiation, and I loved this view of a relationship in which neither partner is the sole villain and which will continue to resolve itself long after the movie ends. It’s the view of a grown-up, but one who still likes a good dirty joke.

IMDB link

reviewed 5/21/07

Once (***1/4)

A few weeks have passed since I caught this charmer, and it’s continued to grow on me. It’s a brief tale, with music, of a busking guitar player and a Czech girl who meet on the streets of Dublin. I’d call it adorable but that might mean “sappy” to some people, and it’s not at all. The stars, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, are musician-composers who can act rather than the other way ’round, and they’re responsible for the bulk of the singing and playing. Hansard, a member of the Irish rock band the Frames (and friend of director John Carney) who appeared in The Commitments, gets most of the tunes, which range from pleasantly forgettable to memorably fine. His diminutive costar only performs two of her own songs, but they’re lovely and haunting, her voice beautiful. I wouldn’t want to oversell this movie. It’s short and sweet and unassuming. The story is a simple one about the space between friendship and romance. If you absolutely hate singer-songwriter music, then you won’t like at least 25 minutes of this. But there’s an audience for this kind of movie, one that will absolutely take it to heart, and I hope it finds it.

[reviewed 5/31/07]

IMDB link

link to the soundtrack on Amazon

The Valet (**3/4)

? The latest farce from writer-director Francis Veber (La Cage Aux Folles, The Closet) finds a meek car parker paired unexpectedly with a supermodel who’s the unhappy mistress of a rich businessman (Daniel Auteuil) trying to deceive his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas).
+ As with Veber’s other work, the twisty plot moves along zippily, the cast is mostly solid (The English Patient’s Kristin Scott Thomas speaks French!), and the mood stays light. The smart female characters are the strongest. Veber’s often-hilarious films have frequently been turned into inferior Hollywood remakes, but the best of those, The Birdcage, gives an idea of his style for those who’ve missed the originals.
- While consistently amusing, The Valet produces only a few genuine belly laughs. The story is decent, but left me expecting more than the terse ending. Veber has given his nebbish character the same name, François Pignon, as several different ones in his earlier films, but this Pignon (the character and the actor, Gad Elmaleh) is not one of his most memorable.
= **3/4 This is a slightly better than average comedy, but rent Veber’s The Closet or The Dinner Game for some real laughs.

[reviewed 5/18/07]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449851/