Deeper Into Movies: "Sex and the City" (2008)

More like Sucks and the City, amirite
Courtesy of Craig Blankenhorn/New Line Cinema

Since Simon Vozick-Levinson and I were apparently the only two straight males in America to voluntarily go see Sex and the City over the weekend, I thought I’d offer an outsider perspective: This was not a good movie. Sex and the City the show, at least until everybody started getting married and having babies and running off to Paris with Mikhail Baryshnikov, was a sharp, banter-driven comedy. The film version — all two hours and 28 minutes of it — had about as many jokes as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and felt even longer.

In lieu of observational humor, the movie gorges itself on self-pity and enough product placement to fill an issue of Vogue (which, of course, gets its own plug). The most egregious sequence involves Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) trying on wedding dresses and naming one designer at a time in a breathless voice-over. You can practically hear cash registers ka-ching!-ing in the background. There are a few bright moments — Chris Noth is as charming (and under-used) as ever as the commitment-phobic Mr. Big — but mostly Sex and the City‘s big screen debut is a weepy, catty reminder of why guys aren’t supposed to like it in the first place. This time, I don’t think they’ll be the only ones.

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Deeper into Movies is a Yo La Tengo song and, in this case, a film review column. Click below for more.