Movie Review: Sex & the City

I have been dying to see this movie since it came out last Friday, while trying to ignore as many reviews on other blogs as possible. It's hard I know, I'll try not to give away so much details.

It's my first time at the UPenn campus cinema called the Bridge and the feeling is really different from the other theaters in town. It's modern, classy, comfortable and everything you'll hope for a movie theater. I don't think I'm going to any other theaters anymore, it really enhanced the whole experience and they even have a restaurant in the theater. The drawback is that they only have 4 screens and it could be crowded during the weekends and while the students are in town but I can manage.

Like a lot of people, I was a big fan of the series and I was disappointed when the show was coming to an end. I have it in my head that the movie's target audiences are gay men; people have criticize that this show is written by gay men, hence it does not represents the female point of view, and "Women" they say "do not have that much sex." While I wouldn't know if that is true, I was surprised how the audience comprise of 80+% of women.

The whole movie is formulated to please their target audience. In the first 15 minutes alone, you see SJP changed into 15 different outfits. That's kinda outrageous. The movie is set to 3 years after the TV show ended, after Big took Carrie back from Paris, I didn't know what is there to say. I thought everyone already have a relatively happy ending, but the story continues to say no relationships are perfect and you do have to work at a happy compromise. I was convinced that Big would die of a heart problem following the series and Carrie would have to meet other men again, it wasn't so. Well, maybe that would be the next Sex & the City movie. Maybe Big would be broke and she'll have to live in the burbs selling Marijuana and become Mary-Lousie Parker a la Weeds, but Carrie wouldn't survive in the Burbs. (By the way Season 3 of Weeds is out and I just got it from Amazon, yippee!)

They pretty much brought the whole cast back. From Miranda's housekeeper Magda to Charlotte's gay wedding planner friend Antonio, everyone is pretty much there. Since Aidan and Alekandr Petrovsky are exes, it makes sense to exclude them, but then we never got a sense of what happened to Carrie's gay husband Stanford Blatch original hooker boyfriend which is a minor, minor detail. Samantha's big time Hollywood boyfriend Smith Jerrod looks considerably older, almost like a young Willem Dafoe.

I was happy that they introduced the sex back into Sex and the City, because the last few years of the TV show, sex is somewhat lacking since everyone got paired up.One shocking thing about this film is that there is a scene where you see a man's penis. Huh? I don't remember the last mainstream movie where you actually get to see a wee-wee. This movie would probably break a few records in that department; the highest gross film featuring a wee-wee?

Gossip goes the movie wasn't going to be made because Sarah Jessica Parker got credited as one of the producers for the TV series and Kim Cattrall and the other girls did not. Kim felt that she contributed just as much to the show and did not get credit for her effort, not to mention she has to be naked all the time while SJP wouldn't, so she felt like she was treated unfairly. But the movie finally made it because HBO promised Kim her very own show. Good for her.

The story is a little predictable, but the show became so much as a part of the pop culture that it is like seeing and old friend. I love it, especially seeing Charlotte became a bit mean at the end, I laughed so hard. A-