What I Learned Last Night At The Movies..

Finally, Sex and The City, the Movie, I admit i have been excited about this coming to the big screen, and I admit I was excited to finally see it!
I went with some people from work and the theater was pretty full. One of the girls turned to me about 5 minutes before the movies was supposed to start and said “I don’t see any men in here”. I looked around, and sure enough all I saw were a lot of ladies. So I yelled out “Are there any other men here!?!?!” Two men raised their hands… and yes… they were each with their wives.

A few minutes later to much fanfare and much anticipation, the movie began. Was Sex and the City any good? Would I, a MAN , one of only three in the theatre be able to enjoy it? YES! After all, being one of the guys amongst 496 women, cmon:)

The synopsis for Sex and the City looks something like this: “Carrie Bradshaw, successful author and everyone’s favorite fashion icon-next-door, is back, her famously sardonic wit intact and sharper than ever, as she continues to narrate her own story about sex, love and the fashion-obsessed single woman in New York City.
Sex and the City finds Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda four years after the hit HBO series ended, as our favorite femmes fashionables continue to juggle jobs, friendships and relationships while they start to navigate motherhood, marriage and Manhattan real estate… some of them may even — brace yourself — brave other boroughs outside Manhattan.”

Essentially, Carrie and Mr. Big decide to get married. The film then races through various themes of love, commitment, individuality, forgiveness, friendship, loss, loneliness… and just about every other human condition you can think of, and all this takes almost THREE HOURS! I admit, I loved the HBO series and I loved this movie too, BUT... was there a need to make it as long as Titanic? NO!

The movie was funny. It made me laugh. A lot. The humor was more “male” than I expected it to be… and a little more crude at times… I loved it. 4-5 solid laugh out loud moments… with many many more giggles. On that level, quite entertaining.

In most movies, you have characters that make their way through the story. But Sex and the City didn’t really have a story. The characters WERE the story, and in this context it really worked because of the diversity in the 4 main characters and their legitimate charm and likability other than Miranda … but most importantly because of the long tested chemistry between them all. The chemistry of that on screen friendship was palpable and carried the movie.

Although sometimes a bit forced, I found the emotional and touching scenes worked. Each of the main characters go through significant challenges emotionally in the movie (which is a weakness… but I’ll get to that in a bit) and at times it is communicated quite well.

Sex and the City is TOO LONG. The movie had a wonderful pace to it right up to about the 90 minute mark, and it felt like the movie was totally ready at that point to head into 15 minute wrap up. It would have been perfect. But instead, the movie dragged on for over another half hour before heading into that wrap up. It was at that point that the movie felt stretched out and unnecessary. A part of the reason the movie was too long was….

There was simply too much going on. For some reason the producers felt the need to give each and every one of the 4 main characters a significant story line sub-plot instead of one central story or without tying them together. 4 full stories takes screen time, each one interrupting the other and causing far to many themes to be brought into it. It’s not that any of the stories weren’t good, nor that any of the themes introduced weren’t worthy ones to be explored… but in food terms, if you’re making a soup, it doesn’t matter if you use 100 good ingredients, if you use all 100 the soup becomes a bit of a mess. You’re unable to appreciate the flavors of each one because it all becomes lost in the jumble of competing flavors. Sex and the City had too many ingredients going at the same time, and as such it hindered our ability to savor or appreciate any single one of them.

Its also funny to note that the producers felt the need to be "Politically correct" and include a very unnecessary "Sub plot" with Jennifer Hudson, great actress mind you, but was it really necessary to include this? NO, and believe me when I tell you that there were some great moments with her, but moments were not enough for the producers who felt the need to take the movie at times in an another direction! the should have just kept a few of those great moments and then, maybe the movie would not have been so long.

I did like the movie, and may even go to see it again. It was also very amusing to me being amongst almost 500 women in the theater to hear their reactions to certain scenes, oh and did I mention that almost everyone got dressed to the nines to go to see this movie...even me:)