Movie Review: Vexed in the City

The honeymoon is over, and the wedding hasn't even happened yet.

I waited for the Sex and the City movie with very few expectations. Let's face it - the show jumped the shark years ago when Carrie hooked up with Aiden, Miranda had a baby, Samantha had cancer, and Charlotte converted. Still, most of us (meaning world-weary-but-still-hopeful women over 40) saw the release of the movie the way we see a first date: novel, exciting, possibly fun, and not very likely to go anywhere.

The movie begins with establishing scenes that bring us up to date on the characters. Samantha has gone Hollywood but yearns for New York. Miranda combines two misogynist anachronisms, power-suit career gal AND domineering housefrau, and is as bitchy and emasculating as ever. Charlotte's back-story provided the greatest opportunities for laughs: WASP-goddess-turned-observant-Jew (sound familiar?) nesting with her darling husband (does he have a brother in Virginia?) and adopted daughter. Unfortunately, all of those opportunities were missed.

Unlike the writers, Carrie did not miss her opportunities. Mr. Big has, after some prompting, popped the question. We never really understand his appeal. Is it his enormous . . . bank account? Something else? One thing is for sure - it isn't his charisma. Actor Chris Noth is a graduate of Yale's revered drama department, yet I have never heard anyone say, "Baby" less believeably.

As I try to summarize why they don't get married, and then why they do, and how Samantha's and Miranda's storylines serve as doppelgangers to this complication in Carrie's, it dawns on me. This movie is the Oakland of romantic comedies. There is no "there" there. It's a television episode stretched into 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Except that a 23-minute television episode has to be crafted economically. This script just wanders around, setting up one unfunny joke after another. I really missed the signature device from the original television show: Carrie's essays that introduce and resolve episode themes. Adding those essay-sequences as transitions might have connected the events in the story. It certainly would have given the female audience what we wanted: the feeling of being there, in the conversation with the girlfriends.

For a movie that purports to be urban and sophisticated, it was strikingly racist at times. Jennifer Hudson, the only Academy Award winner in the cast, is brought in as Carrie's assistant. This is an upgrade from the domestic worker roles of the past, but not by much. Hudson's chemistry with Sarah Jessica Parker is considerable; had I written this script, I would have punched up that part of the story a lot.

Miranda decides, on the recommendation of someone from her office, to look for an apartment in Chinatown. As she walks the streets of lower Manhattan, she cries, "Look! A white man with a baby! Follow him!" I thought I heard wrong, but I didn't.

And then there is the de rigeur don't-drink-the-water joke when the gang goes to Mexico. Do people still laugh at those jokes? Or even get them? What year is this? 1965? And unfortunately, in order to punch up the alleged humor in that bit, there is actually a scene where (can I even say it?) Charlotte poops in her pants. What the hell am I watching? Shreck 2?

As I watched Sex and the City the Movie, I keep asking myself, "Where were the gay men?" Sure, they brought Carrie's gay friend Stanford Blatch in, but not as an insider, as he was on the show. And I can guarantee that, with poop-in-the-pants jokes, there were no gay writers on this script. The television show Sex and the City always felt more like a gay man's world than television-chick-lit. Fashion, clubs, upper-brackets real estate, social heirarchies, self-assured promiscuity, the art world and other urban tribes - those are the traditional (and, in my opinion, marvelous) purviews of gay men. Unlike the show, this movie is almost devoid of the finer things in life (it will come as a surprise to the writers that this is not synonymous with "expensive"). Sex and the City the Movie is all label and no style.

And for a movie with the word "sex" in the title, no one seems to be getting laid very much, either.

The writers forgot something that millions of women like me - single and living alone in a city - have known for a long time. The man that our survival depends on is not the uber-breadwinner like Carrie's Mr. Big, nor is it the uxorious help-meet like Miranda's Steve, or even the soul-mate like Charlotte's Harry. It is the gay friend, and the world he created in every city, who makes life bearable, stylish, and fun. Five years ago, Carrie lived in the gay man's world and had girlfriends who acted as their surrogates. Now she and her girls are on the fast-track to Wisteria Lane.

But at least there is some good news on the health front: no one is going to need a cigarette after this "Sex and the City."