Sex and the City

It’s Star Wars for Girls, but is this movie more Phantom Menace than Empire Strikes Back?

Set three years after the television series ended, the audience is dropped back into the lives of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristen Davis) and former New Yorker Samantha (Kim Cattrall), and you might be surprised by what’s going on. Samantha is working closer than ever with Smith (Jason Lewis) and enjoying a committed, MONOGAMOUS relationship. Charlotte seems to have the perfect life raising her adopted daughter with her loving husband. Miranda is having trouble balancing work, raising a kid and keeping the spark alive in her marriage in the middle of Brooklyn.

And, yes, the rumors are true, Carrie and Big (Chris Noth) are getting married!

Of course, this is not any kind of Sex and the City story without some doubt about what will happen next, so will the ladies find the happiness they seek? Can they overcome life changing, shocking twists and bad hair days?

Sex and the City is a movie trying to be too much, and one that loses its way for a long, dull, dreary, dreadful middle act that might make you wish you could change the channel, but maybe we just need to change Carrie’s hair color to save Sex and the City.

There is a strange correlation between her hair color and the quality of the movie. When she’s blonde, we’re having a good time and watching the movie you hoped you would get. When she dyes it brown for a long, depressing, empty and tedious 2nd act, it reminds you no one should have asked what brown can do for her.

The first third of Sex and the City is everything fans want, and makes non-fans realize what the big deal was all about. We get the dialogue, the dresses, and the drama that made Sex and the City an iconic television program. Writer/director Michael Patrick King fills this portion of the movie with plenty of spicy discussions, and the ladies making us and each other laugh as they lovingly take pokes at each other. Samantha is sexier and sassier than ever, and Carrie finally gets a chance to be Cinderella living a fantasy many women would die for.

However, after the big plot twist, King loses his focus and runs away from what makes Sex and the City so good, trying to prove he must do something to make the movie special and different from the TV show. He drops the other three ladies faster than Carrie would drop a Vera Wang knock off into the trash to focus on Carrie’s new assistant, Louise (Jennifer Hudson), who suddenly becomes the sounding board, trusted confidante and Best Friend Forever for Carrie, when we want her to pick up the phone and call Samantha, Miranda or Charlotte.

Hudson is fun to watch and fits in perfectly, but why have her around when she’s just doing the same things we expect the other three ladies to do, and takes screen time away from the heroes the audience want to see?

Then, Sex and the City becomes an Adam Sandler comedy with jokes about gross bodily functions and a running gag run to death about a dog that likes to hump everything in sight.

Funny the first time.

Gets a giggle out of you the second time.

Makes you think about rubbing his nose in it the seventh time.

King and company redeem themselves in the last third of the movie as everything gets back on track and we are left with an ending where each lady remains true to herself and what she wants, which might be the best ending of all, even if it takes a looooong time to get there.

Ultimately, I’d rather see the movie again than pan it

Sex and the City is rated R for for strong sexual content, graphic nudity and language.