Sex and the City: The Male Kryptonite

I’ve always wondered what movies like Rambo said about men to women: maybe that the act of justified killing/disemboweling/beheading is a mask for our failing macho image. I’m no Freud, but I can picture women validating our fondness for manly movies with that rationale.

On the flipside, what do men think about women when watching Sex and the City: Women live for the next purse, the next pair of shoes, the next shopping trip? They think that clothing and accessories will fill the voids in their lives left by men, the way violence fills the voids in men’s lives left by women? Uh oh, I mentioned shoes — let the letter writing commence.

And there a conundrum emerges: how can a person with a penis appropriately review Sex and the City without incurring the wrath of the people with vaginas who flock to its mesmerizing glow? It’s impossible. It wouldn’t matter anyway, though, because the women who watched the show are going to line up for the movie no matter what critics write about it. And they'll all think it's wonderful, even if it is clearly not. Because not liking it will be an act of betrayal and women hate betrayal, which is why they come down on men so hard when we do it.

So women will love it, but this man thought it was ridiculously tedious and about 45 minutes too long, a little too episodic and jumpy, and just bland enough to be neither interesting nor boring. That’s the bad. Here’s the good: some of the characters are actually worth caring about (they feel real) and the movie gives them reason to shine in a city where people were born to shine — New York City.

Like the hit HBO show, the one that ended four years ago, Sex and the City follows the city-wide adventures of four best friends — Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. Like almost every female movie character in New York City, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is a columnist who rants and raves in writing about her friends’ romantic lives. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the oldest, is a cougar, an over-40 sex addict one pair of stilettos away from being a complete whore — her words, not mine. She’s since relocated to Los Angeles, where she gawks at a Spanish surfer in the next bungalow. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is kinda normal with a husband and also an adopted daughter who derails someone else’s entire year by playfully hiding a cell phone at a key moment. Finally, there’s Miranda, a dedicated professional too busy to wax a forest of pubic hair that's spilling from her swimsuit, and way too busy to have a sex life with her husband. So he cheats, no doubt with someone who owns a razor. These are just broad overviews of the characters; the film expands and collapses their dilemmas several times each, revealing that maybe all the women share the same dilemma — men.

Sex and the City mainly deals with Carrie (played so confidently by Parker), the reluctant star who narrates her own story. She has a man problem, too: She loves Mr. Big (Chris Noth), a suave businessman she’s broken up with several times over. He's rich, although we never learn what he does; if he were smart he'd sell women's shoes and purses to the other characters, who toss $500 at things they don't have room for in their closets. The film toys with their engagement — “I don’t want a ring, just a really big closet,” Carries says, proving my point — and their eventual wedding, which may never happen.

As an ensemble piece, Sex and the City is a little too all-over-the-place, with too many different tones and muted moments. Much of it flies on auto-pilot even when it has something interesting to do or say, like when Charlotte, after years of not being able to have children, gets preggers. Just when it tries to get deeper, it cops out with a joke only owners of a Louis Vuitton bag can appreciate. (Speaking of LV: Women, it's a purse, a vessel in which to put stuff. The vessel should not be more expensive than the stuff.) As a thesis on love, though, the film works surprisingly well; it ponders the whys more than the whats and hows. It’s by no means highbrow — diarrhea plays a significant role at one point — but it attempts to justify its motions with its message, mainly through Carrie’s troubled romance to Big.

This Big guy — the movie apparently, and finally, reveals his full name — is supposed to represent the men of the world. He is kind and gentle, treats the friends with respect, pays for dinners, dresses nice, isn't gay (half the other males in the film are) and he dotes on Carrie, at one point even buying her an apartment so nice she refers to it as heaven. He's so wonderful that he starts to not exist, he just drifts into the background like all the other things that come and go in these womens' lives — pastels, Burberry winterwear, vintage jewelry, martinis, heals with straps. At one point his name is said more than we've actually seen him. I'd love to know his side of the story. Surely, he'd put a cap on the shopping, the incessant bitching and clothes that reveal Carrie's underwear (I almost saw Mrs. Ferris Bueller's boobies!).

Love in New York City looks intoxicating. Something about the city — the verticalness of it all, the close quarters, the narrow streets dense with people — makes romance more potent. Love fills and scents the air and the tall stone and steel buildings keep it lingering above your head. On the horizontal plane of Arizona, love doesn’t go up, it goes out, it dilutes into nothing from here to the next Walgreens or McDonald’s. I never wanted to live in New York City so bad until this movie. Only Woody Allen and Spike Lee have written and directed so fondly around the city.

But this isn’t just about sex and its famous city. Punctuating every second of every scene is fashion. Never has a movie so heavily relied on it before, except maybe in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter, which ended on an anti-fashion note. At one point Carrie and her BFFs participate in Fashion Week and attend a runway show — ironic considering the entire movie is one elongated exhibition of fashion so daring (and often times ugly) that only in New York City could women get away with these outfits. When the credits started rolling I half expected Marc Jacobs to come out and take a bow.

There are three scenes that feature no fashion whatsoever: The first is with Cattrall, who wants to surprise her man with a sushi dinner spread out on her naked body — yes, tuna on her tuna! The second is with Cynthia Nixon as she has makeup-sex with her husband. The scene of Nixon reminded me of what someone once said about Sex and the City: "Everyone gets naked at some point except the one you want to see naked, Sarah Jessica Parker." True. And third, the Spanish surfer showers in the buff revealing his naked penis. Considering how many breasts we see, and that women are the target demographic, I'm thankful it's the only penis that makes an appearance.

It may seem like I've really railed on this movie, and it deserves it, but it's also not nearly as bad as it could have been. Under the right conditions Carrie is an interesting and sympathetic character. I wanted her to find true love. Her happiness was as joyful to me as it was for her. But that doesn't mean Parker is any better of an actress — now that Sex is over she's basically unemployed, as is Ferris. My biggest complaint is that the movie isn't really a movie. It's just an extension of the show. Just because it's on the big screen doesn't qualify it as a film. The characters were already established, the stories already kickstarted, the style and setting already cemented into pop culture. There was nothing really to do except deliver more of what's already been established: that women desire romance but crave new clothes, that women are likely to blame the men just as the men blame the women, that women's lives are complex but they always have room to comfort other women in their time of need. But one more thing …

Funny how the movie will supposedly empower women, yet all these women want are new shoes. Then again, of all the things Rambo could be doing, he chooses to rip out some poor guy’s esophagus. I guess neither sex has room to talk.

***Large portions of this review originally appeared in the West Valley View May 30, 2008.***