REVIEW: Sex and the City

I finally saw Sex and the City, the movie based on the HBO television series starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattral and Kristin Davis and created by openly gay man Darren Star and executive produced by Michael Patrick King.


The movie was written and directed by King, and has had a love it or hate it reaction from most viewers. At IMDb there are an almost equal number of viewers who rated the movie 10/10 (5,822) as rated the movie 1/10 (5,814).


You can place Mad Professah in the first batch of reviewers. I thought it was generally well-written, and felt like an extremely long, bigger budget version of a really good episode of the show.


It contained all the features of the show which made it so popular with its fans: outrageous fashion, explicit sexual themes, male nudity, female bonding and thoughtful musings on love and relationships.


One slightly disturbing aspect of the movie was the inclusion of Jennifer Hudson as Carrie's assistant, playing a "magic Negro" character who assists Carrie with overcoming a great personal crisis. Although disarmingly well-played by Hudson, the character could have been eliminated from the movie without diminishing the impact of the film whatsoever.


I'm sure some of the negative reactions to the film are due to some of the emotionally heavy subplots but I actually appreciated the makers of the film attempting to address serious and important issues in the context of what after all is a summer popcorn movie. And they do quite a good job of dramatizing the issues and resolving them in a way that leads to a (mostly) happy ending.

GRADE: A-.