Sex and the City

Girls love sex - especially when it comes packaged as, "big love of one's life." Who wouldn't? And 'The City' has nothing to do with stockbrokers. It's bright lights. Excitement. The girls' nights out. Successful, independent women. Expensive shoes. Designer label. Labels and love - the two big "l's". Big Apple. New York. City of Dreams. So is Sex and the City, the film version of an award-winning TV show, every girl's dream movie? The film – a short two and a half hours – successfully reprises the TV show format. A decade on in the lives of our characters and we follow them for another eventful year. Carrie now a successful book author - and sometimes contributor to Vogue. Says Kim Catrall (who plays Carrie's friend Samantha), "It was about women joining together as the new family, girlfriends sticking together through thick and thin." As a girl-bonding movie, it certainly works. On the way home, several hundred dresses to discuss, Manolo strappy sandals, and moral dilemmas like, if you have a secret that would hurt your best friend to know, should you 'fess up? Says, writer-producer-director Michael Patrick King, "Miranda's the sarcastic, sort of angry, one. Charlotte's the sweeter, sort of preppy one, the more traditional one. Samantha's the sexy, sort of power-hungry one. And then, there's Carrie, the indefinable one." Their TV personas are already developed and, unlike many TV-shows-made-into-movies, Sex and the City doesn't try to go overboard but develops existing characters and situations.

Although everything in the film is well-signposted, I don't want to give anything away. As with genre films, it's the small variations of plot that make it satisfying. A couple of scenes stand out for me. One is where Samantha covers her naked body with hand-made sushi as a Valentine's gift. Beautifully shot, it illustrates her outrageous sexual appetite in a moment that is genuinely artistic and more memorable than a bedroom full of dildos wrapped in cling-film. More clichéd, is the man next door having a slow-motion outdoor shower, but even that didn't seem out of place given Samantha's showy temperament and transfixed gaze.

The plot development where Miranda makes an unguarded comment which she is afraid to tell Carrie is well-handled. The restaurant scene where Miranda finally screws up the courage is believable and dramatic while still retaining its humour.

But I felt it would be unfair to review this film from a male-only point of view, so duly took my partner along. I tried to set the mood with Shiraz and Spanish tapas, casually asking what she thought of the TV series. "It's the ultimate sell-out!" she says. I was taken aback. I thought it was about strong, liberated women of today? "Yes, but their lives revolve around getting a man." Seen from that perspective, it is hardly the feminist frolic of fashion and feisty friendship. And of course, our whole film is obsessed with the idea of marriage. In a neat tables-turn – what Scarlett O'Hara might call giving men some of their own medicine – men are casually dehumanised. Either as sex-objects (for Samantha), or as provider (for Carrie, remarkably). The other two males (those stabled by Miranda and Charlotte) are insignificant and weak. Carrie's man is famously not given a name (recall how Célestine was reduced to an object in Buñuel's Diary of a Chambermaid by the old man who simply called her 'what he called all the maids'). Carrie is a successful author yet, when contemplating a new flat with her man, she lets him pick up the bill, "like he was picking up the check for coffee." The romantic dénouement is based on what would, without the happy Hollywood coincidences, be deemed stalking in real life.

The best part for me was seeing Jennifer Hudson, who plays Carrie's assistant Louise. Hudson also contributes a fine song for the film which adequately expresses the theme of, "Good men are like designer labels and it's hard to spot the knock-offs." Hudson is a fine actress in her own right, not just a one hit wonder who got an Oscar for Dreamgirls after failing to win American Idol. She exudes screen charisma. Every expression, every intonation, was a joy to behold. Although the clip from Meet Me in St Louis rather reminded me of what a really good movie looks like, Sex and the City, however enjoyable, isn't one. It's a remarkably pleasant way of spending two and a half hours, but the performances are largely pedestrian. Unlike Devil Wears Prada, it's about labels, not an appreciation of the design behind them. By being successfully chic and delightfully superficial, the characters distract us from the wedding bells goal and the way their lives really stereotype them. We never learn much about their work, or about them as people independent of a man's penis. It provides the dual fantasy of apparently liberated woman while retaining the old penchant for ball and chain.

"I want people leaving the movie theater feeling, 'all right, great, that was a lot!'" King says. "That was drinks, appetizer, main course, and dessert, dessert, dessert!" And, like most desserts, Sex and the City is ninety per cent sugar.

It has been a while since I watched the original series so when the movie started I found it cute and nice seeing these characters that I liked back together again.

And there interactions at the start are the movie keep it entertaining but when you head into the plot that's where things come off the rails.

I don't understand the plot and I think that is an issue. I won't go into spoilers but it just seems so strange that they decided that this is what they would do.

I also find that this movie doesn't work as these characters have already reached their original ending if you get what I mean.

Charlotte has a baby, Carrie and Big are together, Miranda has her family and Samantha sound someone she could be with. This all happens at the end of the show because that is the end of the story for these characters. This can sometimes seem forced for lack of a better word.

The jokes are also very 90s cheesy sitcom jokes too. But some people like that.

So I would say watch it if you are a fan of the show but be prepared to be disappointed by some decisions, I think you'll enjoy it for the most part.

Since any opinion on this movie has to be tempered by sex and viewing history let me just make it clear up front that I am a man and, while I don't dislike the series, I didn't ever get into it beyond watching (and enjoying) the odd episode that someone else was watching in the same room as I was sitting. Please feel free to dismiss/accept my opinions accordingly in light of this information. My first proper reaction to the Sex & the City movie was to baulk at the running time, which struck me as pretty excessive for what it was. I was right on this as the film is longer than it probably deserves to be but at the same time it never dragged as badly as I expected. The characters are older now and, after the series ended, all partnered up to a certain degree and "happy" in their relationships. Carrie and Big have settled into a new flat and this has made Carrie think about commitment and legal connections – a path that leads to them deciding to get married. While Big gets nervous, Carrie goes planning crazy, Miranda sows the seeds of problems in her own marriage, Charlotte plays happy families and Samantha has it all except one thing.

This plot setup creates the focus of the film – less on the free-wheeling sex and modern relationships of the series and more on the pitfalls of a mature relationship. This offered more substance to carry the film from my point of view but unfortunately this was not to be the case here. For too much of the film the material is superficial and sentimental with "love" not ever being all that real and instead smacking of easy steps in the writing that focused on events rather than the characters. Fans may say that the show was never about great depths and, in my limited experience, I agree – it was witty, light and bubbly. The problem is that, the occasional moment aside, the film just isn't that way – understandably perhaps given the narrative demands of the platform and the running time. Problem is, without the witty swiftness of the series, something else is required and this is why the substance was important – and why the film is damaged by the lack of depth on this occasion.

This doesn't make a bad film but it does severely limit it to being "average" in the main content. What doesn't help at this time of recession (and the film was released during this period) is just how endlessly capitalist the whole thing. The audience needs to care for these characters and that is a little difficult when money is no object for them, retail therapy solves everything and so much dialogue is about expensive items. To top all that, given how easy it is to get product placement into a film about shopping why on earth did we have to have such clumsy and obvious product placement (the iPhone being the worst example). The cast do their usual shtick and all look good and play comfortably with their characters. Some reviews have criticised the four actresses but the material is to blame rather than them. The male cast are mainly just narrative devices and, with the exception of Eigenberg and possibly Noth.

The Sex and the City film is an average film with lots of problems. Generally this opinion is dismissed if it comes from a male non-fan but I cannot imagine that fans of the series are totally happy with this either. It doesn't manage to capture the spirit of the series but nor does it manage to replace it with anything else of note in regards depth or substance. It is glossy and professional enough to distract but if the plan was to continue the series through the occasional film then this is a pretty poor way to start off.

Let me preface this review by saying I have never seen any of the show or had any previous knowledge of this franchise. While this is not a film I would normally watch, my wife wanted to watch this and I was skeptical going in. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was easy to jump in, 10 years of storytelling missed, and still easily got invested in each character. With a simple love story plot, my only complaint is that it is dragged out and begins to feel like multiple TV episodes stitched together, rather than a full film. All of the actresses are very well into their character and the bond they have feels genuine and they make it a delightful time. Did it convince me to go back and catch up? No, but it was a fun 2 1/2 hours spent and can easily be enjoyed by fans and newbies.

I thought, this is a sure-fire winner - the series was brilliant: funny, romantic, insightful, and we were left wanting more - ergo... great movie. What I got instead was sappy, uninspired writing; I actually rolled my eyes a couple of times, and I love chick flicks! These characters would never utter some of those lines. After developing such strong characters over the course of the series, someone fell asleep behind the wheel and completely short changed the viewers.

Also, the movie is messy, trying to cram way too much into the alloted time, ending up with shallow plots all the way through. The only character plot line I believed was Samantha's. I missed the men in this movie, someone sucked the very life out of them. And finally, Jennifer Hudson's role could be neatly snipped out of the movie without it making a difference. I love her, but the role as written is way too cliché'd for even a fine actor like herself to make any sense out of.

Saving graces: Kim Cattrall's performance and delivery, the fashion and the moments between the girls.