A few years back when the “Sex and the City” movie hit theaters, I eagerly paid my money to see it and about an hour in I walked out of the theater and out on Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, and with a good deal of disgust. Then I blogged about it here on Idol Chatter–the fact that after many years of loving “Sex and the City” on the small screen, I found the movie painful, pathetic, demeaning, and utterly unlike the “Sex and the City” I watched faithfully on HBO. The movie took away all the charm of the tv series, and replaced it with one big advertisement for luxury goods, and four women acting like idiots and as if they were characters in a Judd Apatow movie, complete with raunchy, slapstick moments.
I couldn’t bear to watch this horrible movie, this horrible mangling of these characters that I felt were old, dear friends. And though the “Sex and the City” movie has been scrolling in and out of HBO on demand movie selections, I still haven’t been able to bring myself to finish watching the thing. Or even to fast forward through it so I could at least see the general direction of the plot after the moment I walked out, and Carrie and Big’s big moment at the end.
And now “Sex and the City 2” is about to hit theaters. I thought I wouldn’t care, but after repeatedly seeing the trailer during commercial segments for the tv shows I watch, I find that I do! I care deeply, in the sense that seeing these trailers makes me angry, makes me cringe, and makes me even further dismayed than last time. The “Sex and the City” movie franchise is ruining the TV series for me. I guess I feel a bit betrayed.

While the TV versions of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda were frivolous yes, and silly at times, yes, and outrageous at times, yes, and materialistic a lot of the time, yes, yes, yes (!), they still had heart and charm and endearing love for each other, but most of all they were smart women! But all I see in the film versions of these beloved characters are four pathetic, shockingly materialistic women who are still acting like they are twenty-something or early thirty-something, who have completely lost their charm and heart and their tether to anything resembling real life and the real dreams they used to discuss so wonderfully over lunch on the tv series. I don’t want to see them go off to Dubai. It looks glitzy and off in a way that the tv show never did–as much as the tv show had the glitz of their wild outfits and New York City life, it always retained some of that New York City grittiness, too, of trying to make ends meet despite having champagne taste.
Here is my question: is it me that has changed, or is it them? Is it that I’ve grown out of their characters, or is it that their characters as portrayed in the films are decidedly different than the ones from the tv series? For you “Sex and the City” fans out there, I’m curious if any of you feel the same way as I do.
Watch the trailer to “Sex and the City 2” on Beliefnet