We don’t usually discuss movie openings in The Morning After, but then again, film adaptions of TV series don’t usually gross $55 million in their opening weekends. Clearly somebody out there saw Sex and the City, so after the jump I have a few extra (very spoilery) thoughts about the movie (which I left out of my review for said spoileriness), then I want to hear what everyone else thought of SATC.
(WARNING: Spoilers! I wasn’t kidding about the spoilers!)
The thing that the movie had going for it, obviously, is that it offers more SATC at a time that TV isn’t making any more and that in itself would probably have been enough for the hardcore fans. But I was impressed with Michael Patrick King’s script, not for the plot so much as the nuts-and-bolts dialogue and quips, which maintained the urbane wit of the show without dumbing it down or broadening it out for the movies. (To wit, the funniest line in the movie may have been Enid Frick’s: “Forty is the last age a woman can be photographed in a wedding dress without the unintended Diane Arbus subtext.” Though that line has close competition with Miranda’s—unfortunately replayed to death in the trailers—about women’s only Halloween choices being witches or sexy kittens.)
Some of the negative reviews I’ve seen had big problems with Miranda and Steve’s breakup, but I thought that was one of the stronger parts of the movie. Some of the antipathy, I thought, came from people disliking Miranda’s behavior, but that’s not the same as saying it was out of character. Miranda is the absolutist and the line-drawer; though it also made sense for her ultimately to reconcile with Steve, it made perfect sense to me that she would see his one-night stand, regardless of their six-month dry spell at home, as unforgivably crossing a line.
(OK, one quibble: Brady is old enough that they would probably have been having sexual hiatuses starting years ago, when he was a baby; either the problem went back much more than half a year or—if I were playing marriage counselor—if it just developed, there’s a deeper problem than being too tired for sex. But I can overlook that for dramatic-economy reasons, and also because Cynthia Nixon captured so well Miranda’s state through the whole thing—aggrieved, defensive, angry, stubborn, secretly doubtful and—this being familiar to any parents of young children—simply tired.)
But that brings me to the big plot problem I had: Carrie and Big’s engagement, disengagement and reconciliation. This storyline seemed wholly, and distractingly, engineered so that it came not out of the character but simply from the requirements of the plot and the need for conflict. King needed Carrie and Big to get engaged, to break up, and to reconcile and get married at the end, and he seemed to use whatever coincidences and misunderstandings—and change their characters however necessary—to get that to happen.
When the SATC series ended, Big finally overcame his longterm reservations about commitment and told Carrie what she’d been waiting to hear since the first season: that she was “The One.” This was not an insignificant character development. Then they decided to make a movie, and you can’t have much of a movie if Carrie and Big are uncomplicatedly happy. So they have him propose, a simple, businesslike grown-up proposal that suits where their relationship is now. They have Carrie become swept up in wedding preparations and become suddenly, uncharacteristically, so oblivious that she doesn’t realize that Big—who is basically defined to us, much less her, in terms of his marriage issues—might be a little unsettled by a huge publicized wedding.
Just before the wedding, Big gets cold feet writing his vows (perfectly in character) and calls Carrie, who doesn’t freak out but calmly talks him down (also perfectly in character). But then on the wedding day, he gets cold feet again, simply because a woman whose husband cheated on her tells him marriage is a bad idea. He can’t reach Carrie on her cell phone—because Charlotte’s daughter lost it—and refuses to get out of his car and talk to her. Instead he simply takes off, an uncharacteristically cowardly move (compared with, say, his admitting his cold feet a few hours before) that he has to know will destroy Carrie. But he does it because otherwise, no movie. Then he turns around and comes back—apparently it was just temporary insanity—because there needs to be a big confrontation in the street in which Carrie bludgeons him with her bouquet.
Now, there are ways of playing this that would fit what we know about the characters. It could turn out that, despite the big payoff of the season finale, Big really never changed and is the same flighty commitmentphobe he was when the series started—in which case, there’s no reason for Carrie ever to take him back, ever, since he’s on about his fifteenth strike in that regard. But that would make a sad movie. Or it could be—like his panic attack with the vows—just Big being Big, something they could settle by talking it out (as they did with the vows) and realizing that a big fairytale wedding is not a good idea for them. But that would make a boring movie. So instead, cell phones must be heaved into the sea, emails sent to a secret junk file and Miranda’s confessions about her convo with Big conveniently interrupted, until the movie has gone on long enough for Carrie to take Big back when she see him with her shoes. (By the way, this happens in a smaller way too with Samantha and Smith: he’s an ideally understanding, self-sacrificing sweetheart, until the script needs him to break up, and then he conveniently becomes insensitive and clueless.)
As I said in my review, the whole storyline might have worked better in a season of the series, which would have had enough time to introduce complications in the wedding plans without their seeming forced—which is why, even at two and a half hours, the movie seemed weirdly short.
Anyway, I realize from my lengthy diatribe it sounds like I hated the movie, which I didn’t—it just takes a while to unpack all the spoilery reasons why the central plot was so unsatisfying. What I did enjoy were the small moments, of which there were tons. Such as Carrie to Miranda: “Can you stop worrying about me and feel what I want you to feel—jealous?” The scene of Carrie editing her closet by doing a runway show for the other three. And the nice device of showing the roots of the fairytale syndrome by having in the background Charlotte’s daughter, never far from a princess doll, a castle playset or a Cinderella book.
I could go on, pro and con, but I won’t. What’s your own verdict on SATC?