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Sex and the City: The Movie

Can the hit-and-run half-hour TV format manage to stretch out to 135 minutes without resorting to obvious lessons about love and forgiveness?
By JEFFREY GANTZ  |  May 28, 2008
3.0 3.0 Stars


VIDEO: The trailer for Sex and the City: The Movie

What can I tell you about this eagerly awaited film sequel to the 1998–2004 HBO hit that doesn’t involve giving away the story? It’s directed by Michael Patrick King, the series’s executive producer. And everybody who was anybody is back: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Big (Chris Noth), Steve (David Eigenberg), Harry (Evan Handler), Smith (Jason Lewis), Enid (Candice Bergen), Anthony (Mario Cantone), and Stanford (Willie Garson). But you knew that already. Does the story pick up where the TV show left off? Yes, some three years after Big rescued Carrie from a life of misery in Paris. Do our four now-forty/fiftysomething heroines look much older? Yes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Has Carrie’s taste in clothes improved? No. Do we find out Big’s last name? Yes. (But you’ll still call him Big.) Does Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) return to sweep Carrie off her feet and take her away from Big? No comment. Is there a wedding in prospect? Yes. A divorce? Also yes. And a pregnancy? Could be. Can the hit-and-run half-hour TV format manage to stretch out to 135 minutes without resorting to obvious lessons about love and forgiveness, most of them involving Miranda and Steve? No. Does everybody have way too much money? Yes. Does that mean that the movie is way too serious? Yes again. Do Anthony and Stanford get to be more than window dressing? No. Does les girls’ insistence on remaining, well, les girls mean that their men act like boys? Often. (But isn’t that why everyone stayed glued to the TV? As Carrie puts it early on here, “I managed to stay exactly where I was.”) And, finally, can an entire movie turn on Charlotte’s shouting, “I curse the day you were born!” to you-know-who? (Actually, you don’t.) Watch and find out.

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