Missing the real Sex and the City

I never really thought we needed a Sex and the City movie; much as I enjoyed the series, like most successful television, it really went on longer than it should have anyway. I couldn't resist it, though - I had to see it. And I hated it. It actually made me angry. So I can't get worked up about the reviews indicating that the new SATC movie is bad. The first one already traduced so much of what made the series work.

First of all, the movie betrayed its most likable men, and positioned its two most independent women as victims of those men. The relationship between Miranda and Steve was arguably the show's most compelling romance; certainly it was a high point throughout the life of the series. Anyone paying attention would know that Steve would not cheat on Miranda - if anyone would stray in that marriage, it would be her, not him. It also would have been more interesting to watch Miranda and Steve negotiate the very real differences between them that would lead to such a crisis, rather than an implied "all men are dogs who can't go without sex for too long" explanation for Steve's infidelity. Instead of acknowledging that Miranda always struggled with the nature of true commitment and intimacy, the movie presented her "challenge" as a lesson in forgiveness and flexibility. Characteristics, incidentally, that Steve always possessed in spades.

For me, the second most engaging romance in the show's history was the surprising love story of Charlotte and Harry. Evan Handler is a marvelous actor, and Kristin Davis developed into a delightful romantic comedienne during the show's run, so naturally we barely saw Harry, and Charlotte's only set piece was a supremely unfunny diarrhea joke. Most disturbing to me, however, was Charlotte's pregnancy.

Full disclosure - I am an adoptive parent and therefore biased. But it was supremely refreshing that the series presented a successful adoption as the happy ending for Charlotte and Harry. I was so disappointed when the movie backed away from that and gave us the "miracle pregnancy" for Charlotte. First of all, it's an inflated myth - only a small percentage of adoptive parents with fertility issues have biological children after adopting. It's annoying when mainstream pop culture reinforces that myth instead of demonstrating, as the SATC series finale unequivocally did, that for some of us, adoption is all the miracle we need.

Smith was never a terribly interesting character, but he was consistently defined by two things: his innate decency and his unwavering love and support for Samantha. In the movie, he's simply a douche. It's like watching the same actor play a different character. Equally damning is Samantha's response. The one thing Samantha never was in the series was anyone's doormat. But with both Samantha and Miranda, the movie takes the series' two strongest women and positions them as needy "victims" - and compounds that by making them victims of men who during the life of the series were two of the nicest human beings you'd ever want to meet.

And Carrie - the narrator and least likable of the four. Her narcissism in the movie exceeds all expectations, and for a longtime viewer of the series, that is saying something. My sympathies were firmly with Mr. Big throughout. She had a brief moment of clarity late in the movie, but it's far too little, too late. Everything that initially made the Carrie/Big romance appealing is gone. For one thing, it's really the chemistry between Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Noth that made it work anyway, and they have relatively few scenes together. But the real problem is that, as the main throughline of the movie, the will-they-or-won't-they-get-married arc for Carrie and Big is an epic failure. The importance of this relationship seems utterly diminished.

Finally, the decision to move Samantha from NYC to LA should have created major plot developments. I don't care how much money you have, or how often you fly back from LA; when someone moves 3,000 miles away, that affects lives and relationships. The friendship between the four women is the primary motor for the show - even if we couldn't clearly see that for ourselves, the writers helpfully make it clear on a repeated basis. In the series finale, Carrie's decision to move to Paris was presented as a seismic event. Granted, LA is not Paris, but it's still a long ways off, and the movie's refusal to demonstrate the impact of Samantha's move upon those core relationships is a lazy cheat.

Will I see Sex and the City 2? Probably - Netflix makes it easy. It sounds embarrassingly bad - but it cannot be any worse than the first one. It's a shame, because the series really was a delight - but it was a product of time and place, and probably should have been left there. But as long as it's a money ball, the sequels will probably continue to roll.