Newsflash: I know the title and plot for the third SATC feature:
Sex and the City 3D: Drop Dead DivaCarrie drops dead under the weight of a Carmen Miranda fruit basket hat. Miranda gets a job on "Law&Order." Charlotte opens a brothel. Samantha has a mental break-down, thinks she's Lt. Ripley, hijacks a space shuttle and puts herself into a deep-freeze sleep. Big will quit his job and work full-time at Circuit City.
Sex and the City IIThe tag line:
Emergency call to buy anything no matter how bat**** ugly it is. Main thing: expensive. The economy is crashing. We have lowered our expectations after
SATC I. Brace yourselves: it gets worse. (And yes, I waited till it came on TV because disappointment can wait.)
I am trying to figure out if the cast and crew and everyone else involved (Michael Patrick King, director, writer, producer...hello?) is taking the piss? Carrie takes herself way too seriously, like, for the
entire two hours. Or rather Sarah Jessica Parker. Either one, same difference.
Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha sort of go along with the camp-on-steroids thing. Rich women have the option to dress up all of the time, but are they as obnoxious as these four have become?
I was surprised Carrie didn't wear her Manolos to bed. Even that would make more sense than prancing about in the apartment dressed as if she were being streamed live for "Desperate Upper West Side Housewives"
The StoryCarrie ****es constantly to Big. Miranda's boss hates her. Charlotte is struggling with one kid that constantly cries and the other is too cute, so they make her finger paint on Mommy's vintage skirt. Samantha is vitamin-and-hormone pill popping to trick her body into thinking it's younger. Smith Jarrett makes an appearance and invites Samantha to his film premiere that was financed by Arab investors. Samantha meets investor, she gets invited to Abu Dhabi and away we go the land of what, length-wise, felt like 1001 dreadful nights. What better opportunity to try and out-gaudy Arabian interior decorating by dressing up the ladies as if they went shopping in a bazaar blind-folded? Oh, and Aidan makes an appearance.
The dialogue is excruciating: "What's one little **** more?" uttered by Anthony, when Samantha shows up at the wedding with the humping dog. Or "Hell to the no" or the "Brooms" (mash up of bride and groom....haha). It was all dreadful.
About ten minutes into the movie, the wedding of the once arch grenemies, Stanford and Anthony, takes place. Seems Busby Berkley rose from the dead but with a lot less talent. Liza Minnelli gets to sing. Carrie gets to be the best man. (The styling was so unfortunate, for a minute, I thought
Secretariat was making a cameo appearance.)
What used to be a wonderful ensemble cast, has mutated into a one-b.ia.tch show. Starring really horrible outfits.
Feature Film as an Ego TripStill a great TV series, liberating for women
and men, the foray of
SATC onto the big screen has turned into a "me-me-me" trip for Sarah Jessica Parker. On HBO, as
Sex and the City went into the fifth and sixth season, the shift from four friends to the power of four, to "it's all about me but I need somebody to whine to" mode, was ever more obvious.
Carrie Bradshaw was the perennial it-girl. She was likable. What happened? Somebody's ego trip has made Carrie into a truly unlikeable character.
Back to Sex and the City IIThe problem with the film is that it takes itself seriously. First and foremost, SJP. In the opening sequence, Carrie narrates and reminisces back to 1986 when she first arrives in New York. The sequence is inter cut with the 1986 versions of Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda. While Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha rock the Cyndi Lauper-Madonna-Pat Benatar costume party, Carrie still looks way too glamorous. The scene was supposed to be
funny.Carrie/Sarah Jessica Parker has no sense of humor and cannot in any way, shape or form, make fun of herself. It's impossible. All the gestures and posturing is so contrived and self-conscious, I feel sorry for the woman's apparent deep lack of self-confidence.
The We have to flee Scene in SATC III found it slightly preposterous buying into the plot twist where the fab four have to leave the hotel immediately because, between the four of them, they can't come up with the 22 grand to pay the hotel. Seriously? Despite the fact that they all live in fabulous apartments, buy shoes and bags worth thousands and Carrie's husband is some banker guy with a full-time chauffeur?
A modicum of relateability goes a long way toward more likable and believable characters. Otherwise, they might as well call it the Powder Puff Girls. Escapism works if there is some fundamental anchor in the real world.
That relateability factor is what once made the series Sex and the City popular. We loved it because Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte talked about things girls talk about, in a manner we had never heard before on TV, delivered with such frankness and glee.
Who said there can be never too much of a good thing?
Sex and the City II certainly kills that theory.