Boredom and the City

Wouldn't it be great if they made Sex and the City action figures? Then you could voice the dolls saying "I love you," "I hate you" and "I'm sorry" in a variety of combinations and ways. You could prop up the Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte dolls and have Carrie try on different outfits for them. You could hold all four dolls together and pretend they are walking down the streets of New York. And all of that would be exactly as plot-driven and interesting as nearly all of the Sex and the City film.

I don't think it's necessarily the actors fault that they come off like plastic dolls but every line feels forced and devoid of feeling. I don't even need to give you any plot spoilers because the plot points are so boring and contrived they're not worth discussing. The final episode of the TV show wrapped up everything so nicely that all the movie can do is break everything and then try and glue it back together the way it was which makes the exercise pointless and anticlimatic.

There is plenty of forced filler as well. Just to squeeze everyone in, they shoehorn secondary characters Anthony Marantino and Stanford Blatch into all the big party scenes, creating the illusion that those characters have some sort of friend relationship, completely ignoring the fact that they're supposed to hate each other. They also throw in Jennifer Hudson but all she does is read Carrie's mail and rent handbags - she doesn't get a single scene with any other character. New York faves like Joanna Gleeson and Daphne Rubin-Vega (listed as baby-voiced lady in the credits) each have one brief scene and while it's nice to see them I'm not sure that was necessary. Candice Bergen also gets her one scene but again, there seems to be little point. Significantly more screen time is given to Charlotte's little daughter who tags along everywhere (even staying up late with the girls at a slumber party), repeats the word sex more than once and likes to listen to fairy tales. She is adorable but if Harry had babysat a little more and allowed other characters more time that would have been OK too.

The movie does start to pick up toward the end and the last forty-five minutes feels more like an episode of the TV show that everyone loved. It's a shame that that just couldn't have been an HBO special with the first 105 minutes dropping to the cutting room floor.

One last point - they say that the movie didn't get off the ground earlier because Kim Cattrall wanted more money. I would like to believe that she was just holding out for better lines - her one-liners are scene-stealers. If only the other three had also presented the same demand.