Sex and the City: Full Frontal Movie Review
June 9th 2008 18:33
Warning! This review contains spoilers. To avoid premature ejaculation, click here for The Seduction of ‘Sex’: Spoiler Free Review.
So, ready for a look at all the Sex action? Here is a blow-by-blow account of what went down in Sex and the City: The Movie.
* Film begins with snippets from the series running over the opening credits, giving an overview of each character and what they are up to. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is still living in Brooklyn with Steve (David Eigenberg) and Brady (Joseph Pupo); Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Harry (Evan Handler) form a happy family with their adopted daughter Lily; Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is managing Smith’s (Jason Lewis) television career in LA.
* Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) are still together, and searching for a place of their own in Manhattan. After viewing thirty-three apartments which are immediately vetoed, they are shown, by chance, the penthouse in the building they are particularly interested in. Carrie falls in love with it immediately, except for the small in-built wardrobe. Big decides to buy it for them on the spot, promising Carrie he will build a better closet.
* Samantha returns from LA, and the foursome attend a Christie’s auction, selling the fortune of jewellery given to a socialite by her wealthy boyfriend, who has broken up with her, kicked her out, and left her with nothing but her baubles. Samantha bids for a ring, encrusted with gems in the shape of a flower, but loses to a secret bidder on the phone, whom she later finds out is Smith. In the bathroom, the girls run into a friend of the jilted socialite, who recounts the story of how she was left with nothing after ten years because she wasn’t married and had no financial rights.
* Carrie tells Big she wants to sell her apartment to contribute to the cost of the penthouse. He tells her it’s not necessary, and she explains that she wants to have a legal right to their home, since they are not married. He suggests that they then get married. Carrie agrees.
* At lunch, Carrie tells Charlotte and Miranda that she and Big discussed the details of moving in together, and decided that it made sense to get married. Charlotte screams and announces the engagement to the other diners, who applaud when she informs them that this comes after ten years of dating.
* Carrie calls Samantha and tells her the news. Samantha is less than thrilled, and ends the call quite abruptly. Carrie stands at the counter in a boutique and wryly waits for Samantha to call back, which she does. Samantha makes several comparisons between Botox and marriage, including when Carrie asks her to be maid of honour.
* In LA, Samantha is becoming resentful of the time she spends focusing on Smith and his career. She is also lusting after their next door neighbour, Dante.
* Miranda is concerned about her marriage, and wonders about the lack of intimacy and fun between her and Steve. She asks the other girls how often they have sex. Miranda tells them she and Steve had sex recently which ended in a fight, after Miranda told Steve to just get it over with. She admits that before that night they hadn’t had sex for six months. Soon after, Steve confesses to Miranda that he slept with another woman, just once. Miranda separates from Steve immediately.
* Carrie and Big’s wedding plans start to gain their own momentum, as an announcement appears in the social pages, the guest list grows, and Carrie is gifted with a gown from Vivienne Westwood after modelling it for a shoot in Vogue. Carrie reads to Big from a book of famous love letters she has borrowed from the library. They joke at Big’s lack of romance and the fact that he has never sent her a love letter. In the end, Carrie tells him that she will be happy even if his ceremonial vow is simply a pledge to love her forever. On returning her book to the library, Carrie learns that a wedding is being held there and decides to have it for her own venue. Big, or John James Preston as he is now known, tries to express his desire to keep the event low-key. Carrie dismisses his worries, instead focussing on preparing for the big day.
* The eve of the wedding arrives, and the couple’s nearest and dearest attend their rehearsal dinner. Things turn sour when, after a fight with Steve, Miranda makes a flippant remark to Big that he and Carrie are crazy to get married. Big, who is already experiencing doubts, tries to talk to Carrie about his deep reservations. Carrie, determined that everything go ahead as planned, tries to convince him that there is nothing to worry about.
* On the day of the wedding, Carrie gets dressed in her Westwood, ruining it with an aging shade of lipstick and a large bird on her head. Little Lily takes Carrie’s phone, leaving the bride unaware that her groom is trying to reach her. At the New York Public Library, Big waits in the car as Carrie and her bridesmaids arrive. He has a Days of Our Lives moment as he wills her to turn around and look at him so he will know it’s just about them. When she doesn’t, he leaves.
* Upon entering the library, Carrie learns from Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone) that Big hasn’t arrived. She calls him and he tells her he can’t go through with the wedding. She leaves, distraught. Moments later, Big changes his mind and returns. He stops his car after it passes Carrie’s. He tries to apologise but Carrie lashes out, furious, battering him with her bouquet before being bundled back in the car.
* The girls accompany Carrie on her honeymoon to Mexico, where Carrie remains in bed for days on end. When she finally emerges, she wonders if she will ever laugh again. She starts to listen to her messages from Big, but ends up throwing her pink phone into the sea. Beside the pool, Sam is aghast at Miranda’s unwaxed bikini line. Miranda is upset, thinking that Samantha is suggesting Steve cheated because Miranda let the sex go out of their marriage. Charlotte refuses to eat anything served at the resort, instead subsisting on packaged puddings. She forgets herself momentarily in the shower however, and accidentally swallows some water. She shortly becomes sick, and quickly returns to the villa to find the girls by the pool and the door locked while the maids clean. Too late to make it to the toilet, Charlotte loses control of her bowels. Carrie finally finds her sense of humour again, and laughs hysterically.
* On her return to New York, Carrie employs an assistant to help her move back into her old apartment and manage her admin as she endeavours to write her fourth book. Her assistant is called Louise (Jennifer Hudson), and she has moved from St Louis to Manhattan on a quest to fall in love. She has a fondness for labels but rents them since she can’t afford to buy them. The first thing Carrie has Louise do is block all of Big’s emails.
* Carrie looks after Lily while Charlotte goes to the doctor, where she finds she has fallen pregnant. At first she worries that something terrible will happen, since her life is so happy, but Carrie reminds her that she has already had her dose of bad luck, outside the locked door of their villa in Mexico.
* Miranda and Carrie support each other as they deal with the break-down of their relationships, but when Miranda finally tells Carrie about the remark she made to Big on the night before the wedding-that-wasn’t, Carrie places the blame on Miranda and walks out of the restaurant where they were having dinner together.
* When Carrie won’t return Miranda’s calls, and refuses to forgive her, Miranda considers her own refusal to forgive Steve or discuss what happened. She relents and attends counselling with him. Miranda and Carrie make up and Miranda tells Carrie about the counsellor’s plan: Miranda and Steve don’t see each other for two weeks, and at the end of that time, decide whether they want to try to make their marriage work. If they do, they meet on the Brooklyn Bridge, and if they both turn up, they resume their relationship and forget what happened in the past.
* Samantha adopts a dog after seeing its libido in action. When the dog runs away next door, Samantha follows her and is propositioned by a naked Dante. Sam begins overeating to distract herself from the urge to cheat on Smith. She makes a trip back to New York where everyone is horrified by how ‘fat’ she is. She decides that although Smith supported her through chemo, when she is with him she is denying who she really is.
* Carrie dyes her hair dark and refurnishes her apartment into a homogenised, ultra-modern residence, lacking in character and brown-stone charm. Miranda and Steve meet on the Brooklyn Bridge and reconcile. Samantha and Smith break up and Samantha returns to New York. Louise moves back to St Louis after getting engaged to her ex-boyfriend.
* After a morning of shopping, Charlotte – uncharacteristically – goes to a restaurant to have lunch by herself, where she encounters Big. She waddles out in a hurry, but when Big catches up she delivers her rehearsed lecture, cursing the day he was born, before promptly going into labour. Big takes her to the hospital, where he waits until she gives birth to her daughter, Rose. When Carrie arrives at the hospital, Harry relates what happened, and tells Carrie that Big was hoping to see her, that he wants to talk to her, and that he has been sending her letters. Carrie scoffs at the notion of Big sending her a letter, but when she gets home, she recalls the emails she had Louise block.
* Carrie unblocks Big’s emails using Louise’s admin password, ‘love’. She finds a series of excerpts from the book she had shown Big, Love Letters of Great Men. At the end is a love letter from Big himself, telling her that he is sorry and he will always love her.
* Just before the locks are to be changed on the penthouse Big bought, Carrie returns to collect the Manolo Blahnik shoes she had left, months ago, in the refurnished closet. She enters to find Big there, doing the same thing. She runs to him and they kiss, both explaining and apologising for all that happened. After spending time on the floor of the closet talking, Carrie gets up. Big rises to one knee and says they should have done it properly in the first place. He proposes, and when Carrie accepts, he holds out on of her Manolos for her to slip onto her foot in place of a ring.
* Carrie and Big get married at New York City Hall, Carrie wearing the simple, non-designer suit she had initially thought to wear when they got married, accessorised by her ‘engagement’ Manolos. Big surprises her, having called her closest friends to meet them after the ceremony. They all go their local diner for a meal.
* The film ends with the four women at a bar, celebrating Samantha’s fiftieth birthday. They toast to ‘the next fifty’ with a round of Cosmopolitans.
I have tried to keep my personal views out of this point-form plot synopsis, but have been somewhat unsuccessful. The film began extremely stilted, and it wasn’t until the scene where Carrie packs up her closet and the four women give her apartment a send-off that it picks up. (I did love that Carrie models the outfit from the opening theme of the series.) There are several funny scenes, but they are not of the same quality to be expected from the show, with several of them using familiar material, and others having the distinct feel of a Ben Stiller film, ie. the afflicted bowel and the aroused animals.
The dialogue no longer contains all the snappy and outrageous witticisms we once revelled in, and the delivery of lines and chemistry between the characters falls well short of the standards of the series.
Although the series was not all about sex, somehow it feels distinctly lacking with no real sexual antics at all. Samantha and Charlotte appear in scenes that are slightly risqué, though there is no real nudity. Miranda is the only main-player to engage in a sex scene. Carrie is even more of a prude than Parker’s no-nudity clause would suggest, with the character not even really participating in the renowned banter at brunch. Everything that was once explored with bold defiance is now only touched upon in a distant and manufactured kind of way, from sex, to the representation of the city itself.
The four leads are presented as a whitewashed imitation of what they once were. Plot twists are squeezed in with no real motivation through the protagonists; they fail to develop where they were once in a constant state of evolution, leaving the audience unconvinced and unfulfilled. Many events are a farce: the encounter with the socialite’s friend is too contrived, as are all the tie-ins between ‘labels’ and ‘love’; Carrie and Miranda’s argument makes no sense; Miranda’s ‘enlightenment’ about her forgiveness of Steve makes a mockery of the one serious issue that is raised; the character of Louise is insipid and she seems to function mainly as a comparison to the older women.
The way each storyline is tied up comes across as very calculated. The reunions are too easy – everyone gets what they want, even Samantha, who is presumably supposed to be the token offering of a woman who doesn’t keep the man. The bit players barely get a look in. Candice Bergen reprises her role as Carrie’s Vogue editor, Enid, for one scene, where we get not a smidge of her usual cutting remarks. Anthony and Stanford have a few short appearances, but with all the over-the-top goings-on that have to be squished in, there is no time to learn what has happened in their lives. They do seem to suddenly be friends, despite always despising each other, and in one scene they kiss, leading us to wonder whatever happened to Marcus. Magda (Lynn Cohen) gets a brief look-in, but her lack of dialogue means we don’t get the benefit of her quirky ideas and genuine compassion. On top of this, we see almost nothing of the careers of the leading ladies beyond Samantha making calls on Smith’s behalf, part of a reading by Carrie of her work-in-process book, and one scene of Carrie working at her computer.
As Carrie says to Lily, real life is no fairy-tale. Unfortunately, Michael Patrick King’s sentimentality seemed to convince him he could prove otherwise, and for me, that very act has meant that I didn’t get my Sex and the City happy ever after.
Michaelie Clark
So, ready for a look at all the Sex action? Here is a blow-by-blow account of what went down in Sex and the City: The Movie.
Carrie and Big - Image courtesy of news.com.au
* Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) are still together, and searching for a place of their own in Manhattan. After viewing thirty-three apartments which are immediately vetoed, they are shown, by chance, the penthouse in the building they are particularly interested in. Carrie falls in love with it immediately, except for the small in-built wardrobe. Big decides to buy it for them on the spot, promising Carrie he will build a better closet.
* Samantha returns from LA, and the foursome attend a Christie’s auction, selling the fortune of jewellery given to a socialite by her wealthy boyfriend, who has broken up with her, kicked her out, and left her with nothing but her baubles. Samantha bids for a ring, encrusted with gems in the shape of a flower, but loses to a secret bidder on the phone, whom she later finds out is Smith. In the bathroom, the girls run into a friend of the jilted socialite, who recounts the story of how she was left with nothing after ten years because she wasn’t married and had no financial rights.
Outbid at Christie's - Image courtesy of latimes.com
* Carrie tells Big she wants to sell her apartment to contribute to the cost of the penthouse. He tells her it’s not necessary, and she explains that she wants to have a legal right to their home, since they are not married. He suggests that they then get married. Carrie agrees.
* At lunch, Carrie tells Charlotte and Miranda that she and Big discussed the details of moving in together, and decided that it made sense to get married. Charlotte screams and announces the engagement to the other diners, who applaud when she informs them that this comes after ten years of dating.
* Carrie calls Samantha and tells her the news. Samantha is less than thrilled, and ends the call quite abruptly. Carrie stands at the counter in a boutique and wryly waits for Samantha to call back, which she does. Samantha makes several comparisons between Botox and marriage, including when Carrie asks her to be maid of honour.
* In LA, Samantha is becoming resentful of the time she spends focusing on Smith and his career. She is also lusting after their next door neighbour, Dante.
* Miranda is concerned about her marriage, and wonders about the lack of intimacy and fun between her and Steve. She asks the other girls how often they have sex. Miranda tells them she and Steve had sex recently which ended in a fight, after Miranda told Steve to just get it over with. She admits that before that night they hadn’t had sex for six months. Soon after, Steve confesses to Miranda that he slept with another woman, just once. Miranda separates from Steve immediately.
Miranda and Brady - Image courtesy of showbiz.sky.com
* Carrie and Big’s wedding plans start to gain their own momentum, as an announcement appears in the social pages, the guest list grows, and Carrie is gifted with a gown from Vivienne Westwood after modelling it for a shoot in Vogue. Carrie reads to Big from a book of famous love letters she has borrowed from the library. They joke at Big’s lack of romance and the fact that he has never sent her a love letter. In the end, Carrie tells him that she will be happy even if his ceremonial vow is simply a pledge to love her forever. On returning her book to the library, Carrie learns that a wedding is being held there and decides to have it for her own venue. Big, or John James Preston as he is now known, tries to express his desire to keep the event low-key. Carrie dismisses his worries, instead focussing on preparing for the big day.
* The eve of the wedding arrives, and the couple’s nearest and dearest attend their rehearsal dinner. Things turn sour when, after a fight with Steve, Miranda makes a flippant remark to Big that he and Carrie are crazy to get married. Big, who is already experiencing doubts, tries to talk to Carrie about his deep reservations. Carrie, determined that everything go ahead as planned, tries to convince him that there is nothing to worry about.
The bride and her posse - Image courtesy of stltoday.com
* On the day of the wedding, Carrie gets dressed in her Westwood, ruining it with an aging shade of lipstick and a large bird on her head. Little Lily takes Carrie’s phone, leaving the bride unaware that her groom is trying to reach her. At the New York Public Library, Big waits in the car as Carrie and her bridesmaids arrive. He has a Days of Our Lives moment as he wills her to turn around and look at him so he will know it’s just about them. When she doesn’t, he leaves.
* Upon entering the library, Carrie learns from Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone) that Big hasn’t arrived. She calls him and he tells her he can’t go through with the wedding. She leaves, distraught. Moments later, Big changes his mind and returns. He stops his car after it passes Carrie’s. He tries to apologise but Carrie lashes out, furious, battering him with her bouquet before being bundled back in the car.
* The girls accompany Carrie on her honeymoon to Mexico, where Carrie remains in bed for days on end. When she finally emerges, she wonders if she will ever laugh again. She starts to listen to her messages from Big, but ends up throwing her pink phone into the sea. Beside the pool, Sam is aghast at Miranda’s unwaxed bikini line. Miranda is upset, thinking that Samantha is suggesting Steve cheated because Miranda let the sex go out of their marriage. Charlotte refuses to eat anything served at the resort, instead subsisting on packaged puddings. She forgets herself momentarily in the shower however, and accidentally swallows some water. She shortly becomes sick, and quickly returns to the villa to find the girls by the pool and the door locked while the maids clean. Too late to make it to the toilet, Charlotte loses control of her bowels. Carrie finally finds her sense of humour again, and laughs hysterically.
Jennifer Hudson joins the fray - Image courtesy of showbiz.sky.com
* On her return to New York, Carrie employs an assistant to help her move back into her old apartment and manage her admin as she endeavours to write her fourth book. Her assistant is called Louise (Jennifer Hudson), and she has moved from St Louis to Manhattan on a quest to fall in love. She has a fondness for labels but rents them since she can’t afford to buy them. The first thing Carrie has Louise do is block all of Big’s emails.
* Carrie looks after Lily while Charlotte goes to the doctor, where she finds she has fallen pregnant. At first she worries that something terrible will happen, since her life is so happy, but Carrie reminds her that she has already had her dose of bad luck, outside the locked door of their villa in Mexico.
* Miranda and Carrie support each other as they deal with the break-down of their relationships, but when Miranda finally tells Carrie about the remark she made to Big on the night before the wedding-that-wasn’t, Carrie places the blame on Miranda and walks out of the restaurant where they were having dinner together.
* When Carrie won’t return Miranda’s calls, and refuses to forgive her, Miranda considers her own refusal to forgive Steve or discuss what happened. She relents and attends counselling with him. Miranda and Carrie make up and Miranda tells Carrie about the counsellor’s plan: Miranda and Steve don’t see each other for two weeks, and at the end of that time, decide whether they want to try to make their marriage work. If they do, they meet on the Brooklyn Bridge, and if they both turn up, they resume their relationship and forget what happened in the past.
Samantha and her horn dog - Image courtesy of showbiz.sky.com
* Samantha adopts a dog after seeing its libido in action. When the dog runs away next door, Samantha follows her and is propositioned by a naked Dante. Sam begins overeating to distract herself from the urge to cheat on Smith. She makes a trip back to New York where everyone is horrified by how ‘fat’ she is. She decides that although Smith supported her through chemo, when she is with him she is denying who she really is.
* Carrie dyes her hair dark and refurnishes her apartment into a homogenised, ultra-modern residence, lacking in character and brown-stone charm. Miranda and Steve meet on the Brooklyn Bridge and reconcile. Samantha and Smith break up and Samantha returns to New York. Louise moves back to St Louis after getting engaged to her ex-boyfriend.
* After a morning of shopping, Charlotte – uncharacteristically – goes to a restaurant to have lunch by herself, where she encounters Big. She waddles out in a hurry, but when Big catches up she delivers her rehearsed lecture, cursing the day he was born, before promptly going into labour. Big takes her to the hospital, where he waits until she gives birth to her daughter, Rose. When Carrie arrives at the hospital, Harry relates what happened, and tells Carrie that Big was hoping to see her, that he wants to talk to her, and that he has been sending her letters. Carrie scoffs at the notion of Big sending her a letter, but when she gets home, she recalls the emails she had Louise block.
Big induces the birth - Image courtesy of ninemsn.com
* Carrie unblocks Big’s emails using Louise’s admin password, ‘love’. She finds a series of excerpts from the book she had shown Big, Love Letters of Great Men. At the end is a love letter from Big himself, telling her that he is sorry and he will always love her.
* Just before the locks are to be changed on the penthouse Big bought, Carrie returns to collect the Manolo Blahnik shoes she had left, months ago, in the refurnished closet. She enters to find Big there, doing the same thing. She runs to him and they kiss, both explaining and apologising for all that happened. After spending time on the floor of the closet talking, Carrie gets up. Big rises to one knee and says they should have done it properly in the first place. He proposes, and when Carrie accepts, he holds out on of her Manolos for her to slip onto her foot in place of a ring.
* Carrie and Big get married at New York City Hall, Carrie wearing the simple, non-designer suit she had initially thought to wear when they got married, accessorised by her ‘engagement’ Manolos. Big surprises her, having called her closest friends to meet them after the ceremony. They all go their local diner for a meal.
* The film ends with the four women at a bar, celebrating Samantha’s fiftieth birthday. They toast to ‘the next fifty’ with a round of Cosmopolitans.
The beverage of choice - Image courtesy of kansan.com
I have tried to keep my personal views out of this point-form plot synopsis, but have been somewhat unsuccessful. The film began extremely stilted, and it wasn’t until the scene where Carrie packs up her closet and the four women give her apartment a send-off that it picks up. (I did love that Carrie models the outfit from the opening theme of the series.) There are several funny scenes, but they are not of the same quality to be expected from the show, with several of them using familiar material, and others having the distinct feel of a Ben Stiller film, ie. the afflicted bowel and the aroused animals.
The dialogue no longer contains all the snappy and outrageous witticisms we once revelled in, and the delivery of lines and chemistry between the characters falls well short of the standards of the series.
Although the series was not all about sex, somehow it feels distinctly lacking with no real sexual antics at all. Samantha and Charlotte appear in scenes that are slightly risqué, though there is no real nudity. Miranda is the only main-player to engage in a sex scene. Carrie is even more of a prude than Parker’s no-nudity clause would suggest, with the character not even really participating in the renowned banter at brunch. Everything that was once explored with bold defiance is now only touched upon in a distant and manufactured kind of way, from sex, to the representation of the city itself.
Samantha styles it up - Image courtesy of fashionwindows.com
The four leads are presented as a whitewashed imitation of what they once were. Plot twists are squeezed in with no real motivation through the protagonists; they fail to develop where they were once in a constant state of evolution, leaving the audience unconvinced and unfulfilled. Many events are a farce: the encounter with the socialite’s friend is too contrived, as are all the tie-ins between ‘labels’ and ‘love’; Carrie and Miranda’s argument makes no sense; Miranda’s ‘enlightenment’ about her forgiveness of Steve makes a mockery of the one serious issue that is raised; the character of Louise is insipid and she seems to function mainly as a comparison to the older women.
The way each storyline is tied up comes across as very calculated. The reunions are too easy – everyone gets what they want, even Samantha, who is presumably supposed to be the token offering of a woman who doesn’t keep the man. The bit players barely get a look in. Candice Bergen reprises her role as Carrie’s Vogue editor, Enid, for one scene, where we get not a smidge of her usual cutting remarks. Anthony and Stanford have a few short appearances, but with all the over-the-top goings-on that have to be squished in, there is no time to learn what has happened in their lives. They do seem to suddenly be friends, despite always despising each other, and in one scene they kiss, leading us to wonder whatever happened to Marcus. Magda (Lynn Cohen) gets a brief look-in, but her lack of dialogue means we don’t get the benefit of her quirky ideas and genuine compassion. On top of this, we see almost nothing of the careers of the leading ladies beyond Samantha making calls on Smith’s behalf, part of a reading by Carrie of her work-in-process book, and one scene of Carrie working at her computer.
The 'Sex and the City' women with Michael Patrick King - Image courtesy of afterellen.com
As Carrie says to Lily, real life is no fairy-tale. Unfortunately, Michael Patrick King’s sentimentality seemed to convince him he could prove otherwise, and for me, that very act has meant that I didn’t get my Sex and the City happy ever after.
Michaelie Clark
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