Sex and the City

(It's okay, you can keep reading... no spoiler in my entry!)

It is no secret that I'm a fan of Sex and the City, the series on HBO. But the movie? I felt ambivalent. Not because the series can't tranform into a great movie... it just didn't seem like something I need to watch at the theaters.

Then I get this email from Melissa Silverstein (press me for her blog) in one of her "Women & Hollywood Weekly Updates". She entitles her critique of the Sex and the City movie as "A Women's Cultural Movement". It's her analysis that motivated me to see the movie this past weekend.

Melissa writes:

Whatever your thoughts are on the actual content of Sex and the City, as a follower of movies about women I can't help but acknowledge that this is a cultural watershed moment for women's films for a couple of reasons.

1. Everyone (who talks about movies) has spent the last couple of weeks talking about a film that stars and celebrates women and women's friendships. Indiana Jones is so yesterday's news one week after being released after an almost 20 YEAR WAIT!
2. Everyone (who talks about movies) is scratching their heads trying to figure out how much money an R rated movie targeted at adult women can make. Imagine women preoccupying the minds of Hollywood's men.

The male misogynists in the film blogosphere have outed themselves in a big way with their extreme nastiness about the film with one actually calling the film a Taliban recruitment film. This film has sold out more shows in advance (almost 400) than any other film EVER. Harry Medved of Fandango has been watching these screenings sellout all week and told me: "It's unusual for a female driven movie to inspire so much fan anticipation. You would usually associate sold out shows with a comic book movie or a sequel to a summer tentpole." Clearly there is an audience for adult female driven pictures and we are hoping that Hollywood will make more of them. We haven't seen anything like this before.

Hell fucken yeah bro.

Melissa continues:

...underneath all the superficiality, the issues the film addresses especially about how women still need to be married to feel safe and the many difficulties in sustaining different kinds of relationships are right on the money. The film goes far to show that you can be glamorous and sexual at at 50 - one of my favorite moments was Samantha's 50th birthday dinner. I'm not going to pretend that the film is for everyone and it's not an overtly feminist film. But I can't help but think that the girl power this film is engendering will go a lot further than a feminist film that doesn't get seen by the masses.

After watching the film, I must say, I liked it. To me, it felt like watching four episodes back-to-back, which is really what I enjoy doing anyway when I watch the shows on dvd. And even though the storyline was inevitably predictable, the movie still makes you work hard for that happy ending. Just like how love is in real life.

Wow. Did I just say that? FUUCK. See, this is what happens to me when I watch chick flicks.