Most everyone has a ritual for getting through their rough patches. For some, it’s listening to inspirational music. For others, it’s eating ice cream out of the carton and watching old movies. For me, one of my rituals is watching all the seasons of Sex and the City, a truly groundbreaking TV show.
The first of its kind when it debuted in 1998, SATC matured into a smart way to speak to single women. It’s got smart writing, viewers can relate to the characters, and the things that happen to the four women have happened to me or someone I know. This show just speaks to women, especially us “single gals.”
It has been a long time coming, but the Sex and the City movie made its long-awaited debut last weekend, and is the most enjoyable movie of the year.
In the movie, the story line picks up four years after the season finale. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) are still together and planning a wedding. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Steve (David Eigenberg) are still married, with their child and nanny. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Harry (Evan Handler) are still married with their adopted daughter, Lily. And, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is living with Smith (Jason Lewis) in Los Angeles.
In the course of the plot, the women go through the different things that happen after you fall in love. Carrie and Big fall into a comfortable place and decide to get married. Miranda is upset with Steve for his infidelity. Samantha is turning into more of a house wife for Smith, an actor, than his publicist. And, Charlotte and Harry are blissfully happy with their daughter and another baby on the way. It’s classic SATC: explore the different ways certain things affect a relationship. Basically, saying “I love you” was the easy part. It’s all the good and bad things that happen that are the most important.
On the big screen, the four women each fell into their roles quite nicely. The men did a superb job, as well. It was almost as if these past four years had not gone by with these actors working on other projects. To round out the cast with some new blood, Michael Patrick King added Jennifer Hudson as Louise, Carrie’s purse-loving assistant.
King, who wrote and directed the film and the TV show, (the latter adapted from the book of the same name written by Candace Bushnell), is a fascinating filmmaker.
I love how his mind works. I still remember an episode in season six where Carrie’s visiting her boyfriend in a mental institution and the director plays a character that runs around the set screaming, “feces!”
Sadly, the film seemed to have lost a few key scenes. Its pace is great, until the end, when everything seems a little rushed; an indication of pivotal scenes ending up on the cutting room floor. And unbelievably, Carrie wears the same ugly gladiator heels through most of the movie. Carrie never wore the same shoes twice in all six seasons of the show. Another flaw with the film is that King never bothered to explain why Anthony and Stanford, the two gay characters on the show, are all of a sudden so chummy with one another; when they really can’t stand each other.
Minor inconsistencies aside, SATC met my expectations for a movie version. The plot is fierce. The clothes are fabulous, and the women are still the same – loving each other no matter what; reminding me of my friendship with my girlfriends.
That’s always been the underlying theme, the friendship between the four women; and it hasn’t changed.
KAliciaG@aol.com
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