A woman works assiduously for ten years toward her goal, only to watch it seemingly crumble before her eyes – a prize that is hers by rights, apparently stolen away by the fates. Offered the chance to achieve quick resolution, she delays action, and huddles with her inner circle. Ultimately she falls into an inertial rut, seeming to cut off her nose to spite her proverbial face.
I speak, of course, about Sex and the City: The Movie. Taking advantage of the babysitting services of a home-from-college neighbor whom we have missed dearly this past year, Mrs. Russ and I stole away on Saturday night to wash the (for us) sour taste of Indiana Jones from our mouths and to relax with Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. My own verdict (and, as a heterosexual married man, I realize I’m not the target demographic) is that the movie was flawed but fun. Compared to last week’s fare, this was a fresh and fruity Cosmopolitan. (If the show had originated in 2008 instead of 1998, would it be a mojito?)
The good: With a couple of exceptions, the movie remained true to the characters and told a decent story. I felt like the arc that the characters had experienced in the four years since we last saw them was believable, and the world of the movie was the S&tC world we knew, not a thinned-out, denatured version of that world (see, e.g., X-Files: Fight the Future). I also was pleased to see that they were able to work in some of the minor characters – Harry, Stanford, Enid, Magda, and so on. And I think that both the beginning and (very) end of the movie worked extremely well. They also got in some great lines – Samantha’s extrapolation of the crayon metaphor jumps to mind, but there were others too.
The bad: Before we get to my main gripes, some nits. First, it’s too bad that some of the minor characters mentioned above (HARRY!) didn’t get more screen time. Second, the movie was too long, with almost all of the excess devoted to downbeat segments that may have had something to say, but were inconsistent with the overall tone of the show. Third, in a well-meaning effort to enhance diversity, the movie winds up falling into the “magical Negro” trap. And fourth, some of the characters were caricatured. In particular, Samantha was flattened a bit – “Have we mentioned that I’m the one who loves SEX?” But my biggest complaint (which I’m sure isn’t mine alone) was this: The two main conflicts that drive the plot seemed extremely forced to me. I don’t want to say too much in the body here, but I’d love to know what the women here think about both. My view as a guy – and I am not excusing the behavior of the two men involved – is that this is a movie in part about what differentiates adulthood from youth, and both Carrie and Miranda make foolish, childish, black-and-white decisions that are permitted to fester for far too long. In some ways, this is just a plot device – the decisions do drive the plot, and the idea is to show these two characters growing – but to the extent this is true I’m not sure the plot is any more plausible than an episode of "Three’s Company". It also doesn’t help that Samantha’s conflict doesn’t have much resonance (except on what I’ll call the feminism point, which seems tacked on rather than organic, but tell me if I’m wrong), and that Charlotte has no conflict to speak of (unless “(wo)man vs. sphincter” is to be added to the traditional categories).
The ugly: A week or two ago, commenter Will stated that “[it is] [h]ard to take anything seriously that seriously promotes the idea that SJP is attractive or desirable in any way.” But I’m not at all sure that either the show or the movie does this. Carrie is not made out to be particularly attractive, either physically or otherwise. She struggles with love, with her friends, and (sometimes) with work. She is portrayed as a sort of everywoman – a point made nicely by the closing montage. At some level, the message of the show and the movie is that we don’t have to be gorgeous and we don’t even necessarily need to be living out a great romance – we just need friends who will feed us oatmeal in bed when we’re at our lowest. I suspect this is why the movie has been sold out in major metropolitan areas, and why the show was and remains so popular.
So, those are my thoughts. But I couldn’t help but wonder… what did you all think?
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