I have never seen the TV show, and I wasn’t allowed into the press screening, so I doubt I will get around to seeing the Sex and the City movie — especially since I still haven’t gotten around to seeing P.S. I Love You, 27 Dresses, Made of Honor, What Happens in Vegas and various other romantic comedies that have come out in the last few months, either just before or after my son Nicholas was born and my life got even busier than usual.
But I have gotten a kick out of seeing some of the early reviews. First, this bit from Jeffrey Wells:
The soul of this movie is infected with gross materialism, the flaunting of me-me egos and the endless nurturing of the characters’ greed and/or sense of entitlement. It’s all about money to piss away and flashy things to wear and lush places where the the girls lunch and exchange dreary confessional chit-chat. And this, mind you, is where millions of middle-class women in every semi-developed country around the globe live in their dreams. They’re going to this movie right now in multitudes. Sad. Really sad. Because SATC is crap through and through.
A few items back I called Sex and the City a Taliban recruitment film. All I know is that I felt ashamed, sitting in a Paris movie theatre, that this film, right now, is portraying middle-class female American values, and that this somehow reflects upon the country that I love and care deeply about. It’s a kind of advertisement for the cultural shallowness that’s been spreading like the plague for years, and for what young American womanhood seems to be currently about — what it wants, cherishes, pines for. Not so much the realizing of intriguing ambitions or creative dreams as much as wallowing in consumption as the girls cackle and toss back Margaritas.
And then there is the Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Zeitchik, who also saw the movie in Paris:
Once inside, the movie’s opening sequence, as expected, played to a spirited reaction: loud cheering and excited chatter continuing even a few scenes into the film. What was less expected was what the crowd would react to. Sure, there were the laughs at the raunchy visual gags that travel well — humping dogs, phallic sushi and the like.
But the interesting thing was that the audience seemed to laugh at parts that we could swear were supposed to play straight, and in the U.S. no doubt will — a mid-bridge reunion between a reconciling couple, a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s decision to let his soon-to-be-ex girlfriend keep a ring — and, most noticeably, a decision by a couple to enter therapy. Therapy? A couple? Now that’s comedy.
There were reports from early U.S. screenings of moviegoers weeping at some of these scenes. No sniffles here.
All this made us realize that for all of the HBO series’ popularity in Europe, it really played as frilly fun — with New York an idealized fairy-tale setting — not as the more earnest exploration of feelings that at least in part drew U.S. viewers.
I can only wonder how the film will play in Canada, where American and French sensibilities tend to overlap to some degree. (British sensibilities too, but I haven’t come across any reviews of the film from Americans who saw it in London, yet.)