Sex and the City

For what it is worth the HBO comedy Sex and the City was a decent show. It was a clever twist on chick flick type subject matter. It was equal parts fashion, sex and wit. Not that I understood a single moment of the fashion part. It created a nice world of four unique friends with distinct character traits. It can inspire viewers and fans to associate themselves with the character who most resembles them in everyday life. As fellow blogger Nick, Cinema Romantico recently posted (Sex and the City). I came to viewings of the show late as in syndicated on cable late. So it was pretty remarkably tamed (not much swearing, no nudity). Yet it still held a surprising amount of charm.

And while the series finale was a bit on the weak side of narrative effort, it still had a certain amount of charm to it. It was also relatively satisfying. So truth be told what possibly could a feature length movie do but ruin said ending? Still Hollywood works on profit motivation not artistic sentiments and no one was going to pass on a movie with a guaranteed fan base. But in my opinion the choices made for this movie betray most of the things that made the show interesting. The film rejoins the four women friends three (or four, I can't quite remember) years after the series ended.

Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still happily dating Mr. Big (Chris Noth), Charlotte (Kristen Davis) is still happily married and has a beautiful adopted daughter, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is still married to Steve and Samantha (Kim Cattral) is still with Smith. But since the show was more about the women than anything else we really need an arbitrary plot device to get them away from their men and into a more nostalgic environment. Wedding day jitters for Mr. Big (who is now John by the way and don't worry if you forgot because they will utter, show or in some other way slam his name in your face at least 75 times in the next two hours). It really feels as if they are trying to make up for the fact that the show went for so many years without ever revealing his name.

Truth be told the movie suffers from the first fatal flaw of any show that gets brought back via movie of recent. The incessant need to cram as many vestigial characters into the movie as possible so as not to upset any fan who never could get enough of extra number 2. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that early versions of the script had an Aidan cameo. Once we get the women away from the men in a fantastic "all men are clearly assholes" motif, we can get back to the core of what made the show entertaining. Alcoholism, mindless banter and scatological humor. Oh yeah that's right nothing more classy than a "don't drink the water down Mexico way lest you soil yourself joke".

Which was basically the moment I checked out of the movie that was already doing its best to try my patience with contrived plot points and over extended fashion sequences that I can't describe in any other way than fashion porn (much like gun porn in most action films). And as I sat thinking to myself well they went for a crap joke how much lower could it possible go? Oh dear reader, how terribly wrong could I have been.

You see for a show that was ostensibly about liberating of women who don't take the crap that men subject them to there is a whole lot of whining about the perfect man and their inability to find them. And even a fair amount of "well yeah he was a complete scumbag but come on take him back" mentality. But one could forgive all that for the fairy tale if one so chose. I'm not entirely sure I can forgive the use of the "Magical Negro". Yes this is a real term used by the likes of Spike Lee and appears in plenty of films even contemporary ones (Magical Negro). Take a look at the representative list and you can see I'm not the only one who thinks a certain character in Sex in the City is in fact said stereotype.

Its pretty crappy to see and speaks to quite a bit of the racism that still exists in society today and so I honestly didn't think I'd see such a character in a film based on series that was so modern. At first I wasn't noticing it that much when Louise (Jennifer Hudson) makes her appearance but as the plot continued the filled with knowledge beyond her years and with a keen understanding of love Louise helps the broken-hearted Carrie rediscover herself and love, I was suddenly hit with extreme uncomfortableness.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, the grimmer reality is probably that in the desperate hopes of remaining relevant they inserted a black character to stay relevant. But I can't help but see the Louise character as exactly that. I can't remember a single important black character from the tv show (but I haven't seen every episode) nor can I remember much hip hop on the soundtrack and yet suddenly almost every song in the movie seems to be such. Truth be told the movie could have benefited from a well rounded strong black female character sadly I don't think this was it.

And in the end since the plot went full circle and put every character virtually right back where they were in scene one, I wondered why I had just wasted two hours of my life just so they could go back to the status quo.