Sex and the City (2008)

I’m not going to apologise for watching this. I refuse to make this situation worse by trying to make up some justifying excuse as to why I sat through almost two and a half hours of the most girlie film in all creation. I watched the Sex and the City movie. I've seen the TV series in full. There I said it (you are now free to abuse me at will).

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last 15 years a brief explanation might be needed. This film is a follow on from the TV series of the same name. Carrie Bradshaw, a sex columnist and her terminally single ‘gal pals’ strut around New York draped in designer gear, drinking designer cocktails and obsessing over men and more specifically sex. The film is an extended episode of the show basically.  In a nutshell it’s about some old bird that may or may not marry her boyfriend. So is this one for the fans only, or is it capable of bringing in a new audience and not driving thousands of men to throw themselves out of the nearest window in horror?

Within the first 5 minutes of the film starting, its stall is firmly set out. Carrie, through her continuous and slightly smug narration tells us the three most important things in life are labels, love and some other bloody l I can’t be bothered to remember. The bar is set high; for this is clearly a film devoted to probing deep into the innermost workings of the human heart. Certainly no inch of our enigmatic psyche will be left unexamined. Some of the greatest questions ever asked by the human race will be answered during the ensuing journey of discovery through the full gamut of human emotions. Questions such as: Which designer’s dress will Carrie wear at her wedding? What outfits will she throw out of her wardrobe? And what will Samantha do without her daily dose of dick?

As the plot shuffles along I find myself asking some very important questions of my own.
1.       Why doesn’t Sarah Jessica Parker get that mole on her chin fixed?
2.       How rich is Mr Big to be able to spend as much as he does on Just for Men? Or the rest of them on Botox?
3.       Do the writers really think their puns are funny? “Carrie got carried away”!!
4.       How can anyone spend 5 minutes with Anthhhhhony without punching him? He is the stereotypically bitchy queen in case you were wondering.
5.       At what age does Samantha stop being sexy and start becoming creepy like Doris from Gavin and Stacey?

Sadly these questions remain unanswered as the film closes without any real surprises. Although I did begin to suspect that none of Carrie’s friends actually exist. They are all manifestations of her fractured personality-Miranda is the career driven queen of ice and logic. Charlotte is the homemaking princess of all that is prim and proper. Samantha is the sexually aggressive man-eater, free to hunt its prey at will. I suppose it is no great revelation that these are personality strands of the ‘every woman’ that Carrie has to reconcile in order to find her perfect ending. I just found this film more amusing as I imagined Carrie hallucinating the whole thing while sedated on a hospital bed following one bad break up too many.

That being said, once I understood this is a film that values style above substance it is not difficult to see why it was such a huge success. It is a no brainer that fans of the TV series will leave the film happy. If you are new to the SATC girls you could be drawn in by the easy narration, constant emphasis on style and fashion and frank discussions between friends where no topic is out of bounds. Or you could be appalled by the constant shower of girlie gooiness, dodgy puns and rapidly aging cast behaving like hormonal teenagers with credit cards.

I’m sure that this film will be loved by fans, praised by newcomers and hated by others in equal measure. To be fair it is a pretty perfect version of what it is, much like the plague was! Just don’t go into this expecting it to be anything other than what it claims to be in the opening 5 minutes.

5/10