Friday, May 30, 2008

Et tu, Carrie?

A few years ago, Fran Lebowitz was asked about the recent proliferation of strollers and such on Manhattan's landscape. She replied, essentially, that these same people already have the rest of the country, so why did they need to overrun New York?

I felt something analogous at the 3:15 showing of Sex and the City today. The film is aimed at the type of women who go to New York and take the SATC tour, who don't catch that what made the show great is that its smart, flawed characters would never do something so passive and contrived. The big screen adaptation is a hackneyed romantic comedy and if I hadn't looked forward to it all year, I would have bailed around the time Charlotte, literally, shits her pants. (Okay, I know you don't see a lot of that in rom-coms, but it was the hoariest, dumbest sight gag.)

I completely respect Michael Patrick King, Sarah Jessica Parker, and crew, and I know the financial and demographic aspects of a wide-release feature are very different from that of a premium-cable series. But still. Three fourths of pop culture is aimed at the tour bus women. Couldn't we have kept this one for us?

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