Tuesday, July 15, 2008

I finally saw "Sex and the City"

It's fluff as advertised, but a really long fluff, at that. Almost 3 hours of a nearly content free parade of ridiculous fashions. And goodness, are the fashions ridiculous. It boggles my mind that grown women would swoon after a bag in gaudy, primary colors -- something my 3-year-old would get excited about -- so what that it's Louis Vuitton.

Well, there is a plot, of course. But the story is rather predictable. So much so that at some point I was for a second confused if I slept through "Sex and the City" and was now seeing "Pride and Prejudice", which I was planning to watch on PBS Masterpiece Theater later that night. Because the story of Carrie and Mr. Big's circuitous courtship (if it can be called that) is so Jane Austen'esque. It's full of tropes that were launched into being by Jane Austin... or at least made popular by her. We already know that the hero and the heroine will get together in the end -- the only suspense is how they will get there; what kind of scheming it will take for them to reconcile after a series of misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Just like Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy. The similarity between Jane Austen's heroines and those of "Sex and the City" is that the fashions are dreadful in both cases; only in "Pride and Prejudice" is the other polar opposite: its heroines look like they live in their nightgowns day and night.

But the women's friendship, and how they rally around Carrie during the darkest time of her life, and nurse her back into sanity -- that was sweet.

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