Sex and the City

The feature film version of HBO’s Sex and the City certainly knows its target audience. Those obsessed with designer labels, catty conversations about sex and relationships, and musically cued “romantic” sequences will probably enjoy most of this 145 minute comedy. The rest of us, however, are better served watching something else entirely.

The HBO show ran for six seasons, concluding in 2004. Based on Candice Bushnell’s book, Sex and the City followed four women around New York City and examined their relationships with one another and with men. Interestingly, the show was created by Beverly Hills, 90210 creator Darren Star. Sex and the City served as a sort of examination of how the big city impacted the lives of aging professional women, presenting their lives as couched in obsession with fashion and sexuality.

The show largely contributed to the basic trend on television today: representing affluent main characters dealing with life’s issues while enjoying the finer things. The movie picks up with similar themes and often feels like one enormous commercial, with countless designer product shots tucked between the constant whining and moping.

Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw. She’s generally considered the leader of the pack and she’s also the narrator of the film. She writes a column for the newspaper and is also selling books about relationships, all the while as a member of New York’s elite crowd due to her fashion sense. I’m not exactly a fashion conscious guy, but I found it hard to believe that Carrie’s outfits were at all intended to be taken seriously.

We meet Carrie three years after the show’s finale. She’s with Big (Chris Noth) and they’re moving in together. They decide to get married, too, and Carrie rushes off to tell her friends. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is trying to balance her life with a family like most normal women do day after day, but she’s finding it difficult because it’s hard to schedule lunches in top-notch restaurants and see the kid or have sex with the husband (David Eigenberg). Life is hard, dudes and dudettes.

Samantha (Kim Cattrall) lives in Los Angeles with an actor (Jason Lewis), visiting her friends in New York every chance she gets. She is discovering that she is not having her needs met and realizes that there is no greater love in life than to love one’s self. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) lives with her husband (Evan Handler) and generally has a good life until she must come to Carrie’s rescue after Big has second thoughts just before the wedding. The remainder of the movie finds the four women coming to terms with what has happened and with their unsatisfying lives.

Sex and the City effectively and efficiently strips all humanity out of who women are supposed to be, replacing them instead with clichéd emotions and strange, selfish obsessions. It is compelling to have characters with flaws because they make life interesting, but SATC delivers characters with such precision that even the attempts at darker moments are entrenched in this blatant materialism. It’s hard to find a single relatable character, save for Jennifer Hudson as a completely unnecessary “assistant.”

These are simple caricatures and this is a simple film. There is no substance, no feeling, no sensitivity, no darkness, no depth. The Sex and the City quartet exists not to empower women or embolden a frank discussion of sex amongst females; these women exist to be stereotypes. They are abrasive, monotonous, and ultimately dreadful. The movie, however, makes no attempts at doing anything beyond celebrating the insipid archetypes created by an overrated, indulgent HBO trend.

Trailer: