Dara writes:
Like many women I know, I am looking forward to seeing the Sex and the City movie. Knowing it would be reviewed in the New York Times today, I avidly awaited the arrival of the paper.
Reader, I cried: yes, Manohla Dargis pans the movie. In a nutshell, Dargis feels that while the small screen was suited to the show, as it was essentially trivial in many ways, the big screen amplifies the triviality. The women, especially Carrie, seem self-obsessed and petty, while the men are drawn in an even more one-dimensional manner than on the show.
I will see the film for myself, but I did want to mention the end of Dargis's review, in which she writes: "It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick." Why is Obama in that last sentence? Why has Dargis brought politics into this?
The New York magazine reviewer detected racism in the film's treatment of Carrie's assistant, played by Jennifer Hudson. Perhaps Dargis agrees. Instead of addressing it head-on, however, she alludes to it by bringing in politics in an obtrusive manner.
I look forward to seeing the film and reporting back post-haste.