Be careful what you wish for.
"Sex and the City," the frank and funny cable series, has been turned into a highly anticipated motion picture. Using an automobile analogy, if the TV show was a Thunderbird, the movie is a Pinto -- slow, stodgy and stultifyingly dull.
Here's a 145-minute film that is supposed to celebrate the camaraderie of four women and give us a look at where their lives are four years after the show ended its run. Instead, it celebrates their separateness and tosses in something these women never were: incompetent klutzes.
"Sex and the City" continues the saga of the ladies, who are older, but I daresay not a heck of a lot wiser. Except for the blissfully happy Charlotte (Kristin Davis), each is facing a romantic crossroads of one kind or another. Without giving away key plot points, I'll give you a sense of where you are headed. And I'll use the word "might" a lot.
Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) has settled down into a relationship with Big (Chris Noth), although they maintain their own apartments. At the start of the picture, they have known each other 10 years and decide -- sort of -- to buy a penthouse they can cohabit. Marriage might be in the works and Big might get cold feet, but I'll let you be surprised if you decide to see the movie.
Publicist Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has moved to Los Angeles, where her lover Smith (Jason Lewis) has become a daytime television star. They live in an ocean-front place in Malibu. It makes no sense to take the sexually adventurous Samantha out of "The City," but that's what happens.
She has her own personal management company, but it seems as if she's only managing the puppy-like Smith. Samantha might get cold feet regarding her love affair with the hunk.
Smart-as-a-whip lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) might get into a marital crisis with her husband, Steve (David Eigenberg). They are ensconced in Brooklyn with their love child, Brady.
Charlotte and her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), have adopted a daughter, a Chinese child whom they have named Lily. No mights with these two. They are the dullest part of the quartet.
So what happens in "Sex and the City" that makes it as long as it is? Not a heck of a lot.
The series consisted of 30-minute episodes, each with a question at the beginning and a moral at the end. The movie is a string of mostly failed comic bits that never really seem to mesh with each other.
It's also a romantic comedy without much romance. Most of the sex action belongs to a stud who lives next door to Samantha. She repeatedly spies on him, watching him with a new girl every night, as if she's some sort of bi-coastal Peeping Thomasina. When the heck did Samantha become a watcher, not a doer?
When she isn't acting like a pervert, she's in Manhattan because, well, because she has to be or you wouldn't have the four women eating salads together and gossiping. They eat, I might add, in restaurants that are no longer hot, trendy, or interesting.
Writer Carrie rarely writes. In fact, she doesn't do much in this movie except be happy about Big, be sad about Big, be happy about Big, ad nauseam. Miranda rarely practices law. And Charlotte ... OK, let's forget Charlotte. The silver-spoon preppie was never as vacuous as she is in this film.
There's something seriously wrong with a comedy about allegedly sophisticated Manhattan women when the biggest laugh is about Montezuma's Revenge. Carrie suffers one particularly tough kick-in-the-head from Big, so the girls head down to a luxury resort in Mexico for some R &: R. The goal is to make Carrie laugh.
The trip is so trite and cliched that you can't believe it's in the movie. It's like "Weekend at Bernie's" without Bernie. Or maybe it is with Bernie -- dead, dead, dead.
"Sex and the City" also attempts to advance its story by bringing in two of the hoariest cliches a film can use -- the use of a cute kid and a cuter dog. In fact, a key plot point actually revolves around the relentlessly annoying Lily hiding a cell phone.
As for Samantha's sublimating pooch, well, we're told it's a female that's been spayed, but the thing humps plush toys like a male dog. This is supposed to pass for wit.
The best bit of satire comes in the form of a line combining women getting older and Diane Arbus, a joke that might not resonate with some moviegoers.
Writer-director Michael Patrick King crams his movie with those horrid video montages that only serve to point out how empty his screenplay is, and that he's utterly bereft of new ideas. I lost track of how many there were, I recall six, including a fashion show, a look at Carrie's crazy outfits, and a zany -- King wishes -- look at a number of wedding dresses for Carrie that are nothing more than product placements for whoever made the gowns.
Perhaps needless to say, there's a lot of New York in the movie, but on the big screen it's actually more background than anything else. The city isn't key to anything that goes on in the various muddled story lines, which I found to be a strange omission. Manhattan was always part of the goings-on. It was another character, a fifth Beatle so to speak.
Another questionable decision from King was to make Charlotte's gay pal, personal shopper and interior expert Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone), and Carrie's gay pal, Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson), an item.
Yep, Anthony and Stanford are a twosome, which isn't explained and makes no sense since they hate each other. Sorry, but they aren't opposite enough to attract. In fact, the out-and-proud gay director King has degayed "Sex and the City." He's also defanged it. There's just no cutting edge in this film.
Candice Bergen shows up briefly as Carrie's Vogue editor, but as much as I like Bergen, she seemed to be gritting her teeth in her brief moments, as if she decided to bite the bullet and act in the darn movie for the paycheck. Her character doesn't do much, which might be the reason for her glumness.
Joanna Gleason is a therapist and Jennifer Hudson has been cast as Carrie's new personal assistant. She's Louise from St. Louis. Get it? Seriously, that's actually an attempt at a laugh line, a lame moment in a very lame movie.
It's up to Hudson's character to offer Carrie a glimpse into the heartwarming possibilities that can be found when a person is really in love. King seems to think that the other three gal pals don't have the stuff to knock some sense into Carrie. Louise is also around to provide a massive plug for a certain high-end handbag maker.
The movie also lacks a sense of glamour and even a sense of discovery. The dialogue isn't sharp and the cinematography is dreadful -- too dark, too grainy, too harsh. There are moments when the four main characters all look haggard, and I don't mean only when they're getting out of bed in the morning. Skin tones are washed out.
The music isn't memorable and production values are ordinary. Even costumer Patricia Field's vaunted clothing designs aren't all that special.
After the film ends, you sit and wonder, What was that? What did I just see? The unused outtakes from HBO?
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 3 2008 |