Sex and the City (2008)

I didn’t watch any of the television series, twenty years earlier, upon which this was based so came to this new - and for a while it’s quite enjoyable. It picks up the story of four women, all of whom are now approaching their fifties, and is narrated by “Carrie” (Sarah Jessica Parker) as she looks forward to the wedding of the decade with her very own “Mr. Big” (Chris Noth). Meantime, “Samantha” (Kim Cattrall) is starting to have doubts about her relationship with her hard-working, heart-throb, actor (Jason Lewis); “Miranda” (Cynthia Nixon) has had some fairly earth-shattering news from husband “Steve” (David Eigenberg) and it seems “Charlotte” (Kristin Davis) is the only one content with her lot, and with “Harry” (Evan Handler). With all of this confusion reigning, it’s hardly surprising that tempers are fraying, trusts are straining and people are readily getting the wrong end of the stick. Of course, when the big wedding goes pear shaped as we fully expect, that leaves the four women to evaluate where they are with their lives, loves and Louis Vuitton. My problem here was that it’s all just too sluggish. It has moments of sexiness and comedy, but it’s as if each gal was promised one quarter of the storyline - whether their character deserved it or not, and so we end up with lots of excess padding, especially around Nixon and Cattrall’s undercooked characters. Clearly they all know their roles backwards, but that just added a certain soapiness to a film that comes across as simply an extended version of one of it’s earlier glamorous and more bitchy editions. A bit like the Christmas specials we used to get on television, only we are coming in at the end when it has passed it’s best and lost the pithiness that made it good in the first place. Had they shaved half an hour from it and focussed more on the outrageousness elements, I might have enjoyed it more but in the end I felt it more a poor relation of “Absolutely Fabulous” only with more fake tan.