Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my year
long challenge to keep myself consistently writing and engaging with
films I haven't seen before.
I can't exactly say this was one
for my to do list, but it is one I did invite on myself by virtue of
giving my wife the wild card/veto option.
In hindsight, I
should have realized she would be using this to test my limits and
specifically trying to angle towards films outside of my general
wheelhouse just to see what I'd do. In that regard, I commend her,
because in this case, I got both a challenge as well as just a larger
general experience.
Which is probably where I should start
this review by saying that, before watching this, I had little to no
experience with Sex and the City. There were bits I had gleaned
second hand, either details from my wife or jokes about it on The
Majority Report (host Sam Seder had a guest spot on the show back in
the day) or American Dad! (See screenshot below – I get this
particular joke THAT much more now.)
Sex and the City movie.
It's 700 pages!"
So when I agreed to watch this movie as
my wife's veto pick (and the locked picks are turning into a wild list so far) I was also counting on
her for general explanation/reference for a lot of what I was about
to watch.
That's a lot of preamble for this one as my way of
saying 'this was one it took me a while to wrap my thoughts around
for a write-up, so please bear with me.'
So, to start with, the elevator pitch,
comprising of the movie itself as well as the context points I was
given for this. This movie was designed to serve as a big budget
send-off to the hit HBO TV series. In particular, the focus being on
Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie finally tying the knot with her
on-again, off-again love interest Big (not his actual name and played
by the...let's now say troubled Chris Noth.) This is the main focus,
anyway, though all four of the leads each has their own storyline to
work through.
It's a lot of movie, but I get it – it's an
ensemble show and this was meant to be the curtain call.
Speaking
of which – yes, there's also a lot of focus with the clothes. This
is, as I've been informed, something the show sort of evolved into
after its first few seasons as designers saw this as a good showcase,
so with this movie as the big finish, it made sense that would also
factor in.
Stick a pin in that, by the way. It's going to come
back for one of my points later.
But first, I'll just say this – I
didn't hate this. It's not gonna be among the best I've seen this
year (and there have been some solid gems I'm glad I've finally taken
off the list) but I also wasn't in Hell watching this. In fact, there were some things that I did find enjoyable to watch. In particular, the cast earned this a lot of good will (with special shout to Kim Catrall, continuing to elevate most things she's in.)
I
feel like this can be best summed up as a 'It's not for me, and
there's nothing wrong with that.' Which is something I'm kind of glad
I got to experience in this run. Don't get me wrong, I like that I've
largely been happy with what I've watched, but there is something healthy to encountering something
that isn't bad, but just isn't really something you're meant to click
with. For lack of a better way to put it, it's like a perspective
check, and one I feel like I appreciate more now in the current age
of film discourse where so many takes are of an all-or-nothing stance
where a film is either the best thing ever or the worst. There's a
place in the conversation for this sort of feeling, and it's good to
be reminded of it.
There is one thing I will
say did bother me about this. I will acknowledge this may also be
partly the 'this isn't for me' talking when I say it but – damn,
two and a half hours was a big ask for this one. Which seems weird to
say as I've watched other long movies for this before – in fact,
next week is coming in only a little shy of this runtime. In this
case, I think it was one where I just felt it more at times – most
notably the mid-movie trip to Mexico. I'm not saying the movie
shouldn't have gone there, cause I see its function in the larger
movie, but it also feels like it takes more time than it needs to
wallowing in Carrie's misery, and setting up for a single scene
pay-off in which someone craps themselves (which, in theory, I
commend the ambition of, less so in practice.) There isn't really
something I can really say is a case of 'lose it' in this movie as
much as 'this could have been tightened up a bit.'
As I was requested on this, I will quote my wife
on this scene - "Don't throw flowers. Throw hands!"
I can also see why it
runs this long. At the time, meant to be the grand finale, so the
impulse to go big is understandable. It's also something I do have to
give this movie – as movies based on TV shows go, there is always
that tricky balancing act where you want to capture the charm of the
show, but you also want to avoid just feeling like you're making a
jumbo-sized episode or what feels like several episodes cut together.
I've seen some that clear this hurdle well (The X-Files: Fight the
Future and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) and others that don't quite
get over it (production budget aside, The Simpsons Movie, I'm looking
at you.) While I will admit I'm not familiar with the series to make
the full comparison, just taken on its own, this felt like a case of
recognizing 'we have a movie budget, so let's blow the scope up' in a
way that largely pays off. I'm deferring in part to my wife on this
as far as if this is an accurate reading compared to the show, and
have been informed overall, yes.
Honestly? The most fascinating part
about this watch has been, as I said above, just the general
experience. More than just watching a movie, this was me getting a
crash course in a series (I feel strange calling this one a
franchise) I had very little prior experience or knowledge of in time
for what was functionally their series finale. In that regard, it was
a winding, strange, and sometimes fun deep dive.
By this
point, I'm sure some of you are going 'You do know they made another
one, right?'
Well, that's the other thing that stuck with me
on this one.
See? I told you we'd come back to this.
So,
there is one moment in this movie in particular that hit me and
really stuck. The kicker is, it's a moment that happens entirely by
accident.
Okay, not ENTIRELY. The scene itself is meant to be
a moment of revelation for Carrie, but there is a detail in the
scene, not relevant to the context of the story, but watched through
the eyes of 2026, it hits VERY differently. Without going too deep
into set-up, there is an early plot point of the movie where Carrie
agrees to a magazine shoot for her wedding, a decision that turns
what was meant to be a small affair into an oversized production.
Later in the film, after this has led to Big jilting her at the
altar, she finds the magazine again and realizes this may have been
the problem. Now for the fun part – the magazine in question is
under another magazine. That other magazine's cover talks of a
looming financial bubble.
Screenshot to prove I'm not lying.
It was at this point that I found myself looking up when in 2008 this movie came out. This was just ahead of the crash. Which led to an interesting discussion with my wife about that timing, particularly paired with her pointing out how a big part of why the second movie is generally regarded as awful is the very tone deaf way it navigated that post-crash world.
This meta aspect lent an interesting feel to the experience of watching this knowing it was originally meant to be the end. Since then, they've had that sequel movie as well as a follow up TV series which, while it still has had some decent audiences, has never quite regained the momentum the original series had. With that detail it really hit home that this movie was, for this larger series, an end of an era. With the crash, this kind of a series (or more accurately what this series had become) would not land quite the same way, despite the game attempts of the people behind it to do so. Like a band still performing after a major member died, something was missing (this all before getting into the fact Kim Catrall declined to be part of the sequel series, but as far as this goes, that's more of a side note.)The performance continues, but as far as it was described to me, it never quite sounds the same.
In a way, I think that's the thing I'm most fascinated by in this movie. The fact that it is a very particular sort of time capsule taken just before things changed in a drastic way, and it's interesting to see in that light knowing how much of this would play very differently a a year or two later.
Huh...and here I started this joking about the relative absurdity that this wound up being the movie I wrote about for Bleak Week. I found a way!
Of course, it's also funny that this
landed on that particular week as it's sandwiched between two fairly
dark movies otherwise.
In the spirit of the shuffle pulling
wild tonal shifts, we're going from the high fashion world of a
pre-bubble New York to a blood soaked slice of Korean extreme with I
Saw the Devil.
Man, this month is gonna be a wild
one.
Till then.
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