Sex and the City

Year: 2008
Genre: Comedy
Directed: Michael Patrick King
Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristen Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, Candice Bergen, Jennifer Hudson, David Eigenberg, Evan Handler, Jason Lewis, Mario Cantone
Production: New Line Cinema

On the next season of Sex and the City (1998-2004), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is about to marry Mr. Big (Chris Noth) but is jilted at the wedding. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) take her on the honeymoon she should have had in Mexico, then she rebuilds her life. Meanwhile Samantha gets used to the challenges of relationship life, Cynthia’s bo cheats on her and puts their marriage in jeopardy and Charlotte gets pregnant! Guest starring Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson and Academy Award nominee Candice Bergen.

Yes it reads like the back of a Season 7 DVD packet back because Sex and the City (2008) is just that, another season of the highly celebrated HBO TV Show masquerading as a movie. That in itself, would probably be enough to entice its primary audience and to you I say kudos. Read no further, go enjoy yourselves…are they gone?

Ugh. If I may be honest, I liked the four episodes of the show I watched. While I am far from the primary demographic here, I found it kind of refreshing that a show taking place in upscale New York City circa 1998 could conjure up such interesting if vapid characters. That and before Game of Thrones (2011-Present) and The L Word (2004-2009), it was a premium cable show not afraid to show some skin. Plus is it possible for a straight man to find Mario Cantone hilarious? You’re damn right!

But come on! Was this movie really necessary? The only fathomable reason for this useless, listless piece of chintzy trash to exist is to give anthropologists an ironic before picture of the 2008 financial meltdown. Four aging (but still fabulous, fabulous I say!) women walking around in designer clothes complaining about their dreary upper-crust life, blissfully unaware of the possible hurdles they will have to face in a few months time. If this were real New York, ground zero for the Great Recession, Carrie would be selling her Dolce Gabana pumps for a hot meal. Miranda would be divorced because finances are a bigger reason for divorce rates than fidelity and Charlotte would be on food stamps. So much for happy endings where people find sweet, sweet, love in the big city.


This movie attempts to be about love but it really isn’t about love at all. If it were it wouldn’t have been nearly as episodic or emotionally unaffecting. No this movie is a blatant attempt to cash in on the franchise; calmly stroking the back of those still holding on to Carrie’s heyday adventures as if they can live vicariously through the popular author and her sisterhood of traveling mini skirts. Oh, it would be so nice to be able to pay for two different upscale apartments in Manhattan and still have enough cash to hire a token black assistant but as the credits role did you really get any value from this movie? Anything other than the feeling of déjà vu and amnesia I got while watching Sex and the City? I really do feel as if I have forgotten this before.

...and it looks like I'll have to forget it again.

The movie ends in probably the best way it could have. The four girls walking into an exclusive looking club wearing top-line dresses. They sit and enjoy the eldest of the four’s 50^th birthday with a small cake and martinis as younger women pass by. While the sentimental and the already converted might see this scene as a blissful farewell/passing of the torch, I see it differently. While the ladies toast to the next 50 years, one thought screamed in my head repeatedly “You’re old!”

Sex and the City 5

Final Grade: F