chad viewing.

An Epic of Astounding Triviality

This epic big-screen contrivance of Sex and the City prolongs the chronicle of the four heroines of the funny television series, the first five or so episodes I have seen, and in the company of two friends who had already seen every episode. The characters are older now but no wiser, and all confronting a number of romantic moments of truth. I suppose I am able to safely say Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is in the 10th year of her liaison with Mr. Big (Chris Noth) when they more or less make a decision to buy a penthouse. Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has gone to LA, where her young sex partner has turned out to be a daytime TV idol. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and her husband have adopted a Chinese daughter. And Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is in a predicament with her husband.

What with one thing and another, stagy plot developments affect the four best friends to travel to a lavish Mexican spa, where they go sunbathing in figure-squeezing swimsuits, and Miranda is made fun of for the copious increase of her pubic hair. A little afterward, Charlotte craps her pants. This is one scene where I did laugh. Looking back on it, the occurrence actually isn't nearly as funny as its position in the story as a key moment!

The original TV show was a hit for its sexual outspokenness, and sometimes it was quite funny. In the film, however, it seems to mimic the comic style of the Farrelly brothers, big gross-out moments that are more like set pieces than part of the story. For instance, Samantha's dog is a compulsive masturbator. She's been fixed, but she has not lost the urge.

By now, I should have informed that I am not the person to review this movie. Maybe you will enjoy a review from someone who excludes himself of the cultish eligibility of the movie's audience, and has lost a lot of respect for most of the characters that grew on him before and is jaded by their brainless dialogue. There is an elaborately extensive montage of wedding dresses by renowned designers. What are those of us filmgoers supposed to think who don't resound with the luminaries of designer labels?

From what I saw of Chris Noth's Mr. Big character on the show, he had a cool, mysterious vibe. Here, he is dull. He's classically good-looking in the hunky yet romantic Rock Hudson convention, and has a breathy, unnaturally serene voice that supplies routine encouragements and hackneyed lines with a good knack for timing. I think he is supposed to be the turning of the tables in the sense that most of the time, the woman is made to be the hollow token romantic interest and the men are running the show and now for the sake of a predominantly female franchise, the roles are reversed. He poses as if knowingly posturing as the ultimate man.

The most human character is Jennifer Hudson, who is still in her 20s and, hot off her earth- shattering performance in Dreamgirls, has not quite yet become skilled at being a lackluster commercial sketch. Her character was written that way, however, because she does everything we have seen before in a chick flick or a musical. She is hired as Carrie's assistant and and over time Restores Carrie's Belief In True Love. However, Hudson is welcoming and responsive, which does not illustrate the four self-obsessed, obsessively materialistic and unapologetically stereotypical girly-women.

And that is my central peeve with this movie. I have no one with whom to sympathize. At all. Zero. And I felt sorry for Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. These four women have not a mature bone in their bodies. They are shallow, gossipy, idle, pampered, materialistic and indulgent. Take for instance a surprise encounter with Mr. Big at a restaurant that leaves Charlotte so furious that she goes into labor. She doesn't just get this furious. She lets herself get this furious and make a scene, no less, because she and her three friends have decided to villainize him rather than reach a communicative understanding with him about why he did what he did. All of that, by the way, is done with the maturity, tact, understanding and communication of a landslide boulder