Sex and the City had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London on May 15, 2008, before its release in the United States on May 30. Despite mixed reviews from critics, calling the film an extended episode of the series, it was a commercial success, grossing $418.8 million worldwide from a $65 million budget. A sequel film, Sex and the City 2, followed in 2010, and a sequel series, And Just Like That..., in 2022.
Plot
Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big are in a committed relationship.[a] Meanwhile, Charlotte York is happily married to Harry, and the couple have adopted a Chinese girl named Lily, Miranda Hobbes has settled down in Brooklyn with Steve to raise their son Brady together, and Samantha Jones has moved to Los Angeles to be close with Smith, but returns to New York as much as possible to spend time with Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda.
Carrie and Mr. Big are planning to move in together, and find an idyllic and expensive penthouse. Big declares that he will purchase it for them. Concerned that she would have no legal rights to their home if they separate, Carrie offers to sell her own apartment to contribute to the cost of the penthouse. Big suggests that they get married to assuage her concerns, and Carrie accepts.
Carrie's Vogue editor Enid invites her to be featured in the magazine's annual "Age Issue" in bridal couture, as Carrie (at 40) is considered the oldest possible age to wear a bridal gown. She poses in numerous couture bridal gowns for the spread, including one she especially adores by Vivienne Westwood. Westwood sees the photos and gifts Carrie the dress for her wedding. As a result of the extravagant dress, Carrie begins to expand the size and grandiosity of the wedding, which begins to give the twice-divorced Big anxiety.
Meanwhile, Miranda and Steve's sex life has become stagnant as a result of pressures from work and family life. They have not had sex for months, and eventually Steve confesses to having cheated on her. A heartbroken Miranda leaves him.
At Carrie and Big's rehearsal dinner, Steve tries to reconcile with Miranda, who remains upset and tells Big that marriage ruins everything. On the wedding day, Big's doubts get the better of him and he calls Carrie to tell him he cannot go forward with the wedding. Carrie, devastated, flees the venue. Big realizes that he has made a mistake and catches up with Carrie, but she furiously attacks him with the bouquet in the middle of the street.
The girls accompany Carrie on her Mexican honeymoon, where they de-stress and help Carrie overcome the pain of being jilted at the altar. Upon returning to New York City, Carrie hires a young woman, Louise, as her assistant. Louise helps Carrie "rejoin the world" and overcome her broken heart. She ultimately rekindles her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and moves home to St. Louis to marry him.
Charlotte learns that she is pregnant, despite years of fertility problems, and is overjoyed. Miranda confesses to Carrie what she said to Big, and Carrie accuses her of ruining her marriage. Days later, Miranda visits Carrie and asks for forgiveness. Carrie relents and suggests that she consider forgiving Steve. Miranda attends couples counseling with Steve, wherein they address their trust issues and reconcile.
In L.A., Samantha struggles with her lust for her sexually voracious neighbor, Dante, while Smith works long hours shooting a popular T.V. show. The girls help her realize that she is no longer happy in her relationship with Smith. Samantha eventually admits to him that while she loves him, she needs to move on and returns to New York.
Charlotte encounters Big at a restaurant and confronts him, which causes her water to break. He takes her to the hospital and stays, hoping to see Carrie. When Carrie arrives, Harry tells her that Big had mentioned that he had written to her repeatedly but never received a reply. She goes home to find numerous emails from him, which Louise had hidden at Carrie's request, all famous love letters. In his final message, Big apologizes and promises to love her forever.
Carrie goes to their penthouse to collect a pair of brand new Manolo Blahnik shoes she had left behind. She finds Big there and, overcome by love for him, embraces him. They reconcile and marry alone in a simple wedding in New York City Hall. Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte turn up to surprise her, arranged by Big. The girls later toast with Cosmopolitans to Samantha's 50th birthday, "and the next 50."
At the end of Sex and the City's run in 2004, there were indications of a film being considered following the series. HBO announced that Michael Patrick King was working on a possible script for the film which he would direct.[3] Later that year, Kim Cattrall declined to work on the project citing reasons that the script and the start date were overly prolonged and she decided to take other offers at hand.[4] As a result, the immediate follow-up ideas for the film were dropped.
It was in mid-2007 that the plans for making the film were announced again. This reportedly resulted after Cattrall's conditions being accepted along with a future HBO series.[5]
In May 2007 the project was halted after HBO decided it was no longer in a position to finance the film on its own. The project was pitched within the Time Warner family (owners of HBO) and was picked by sister concern New Line Cinema.
Filming
The film was prominently shot in New York between September–December 2007.[6][7] The locations included a number of places around Manhattan and a certain portion was shot in Steiner Studios and Silvercup Studios. The shooting was continually interrupted by paparazzi and onlookers with the security and police authorities employed in order to control the crowd.[8]
Efforts were taken to keep the film's plot secret, including the shooting of multiple endings.[9] As a defense strategy, scenes shot in public or in presence of number of extras were termed by Ryan Jonathan Healy and the main cast as "dream sequences".[10] The supporting cast included cameos from several actors with Broadway roots, including Daphne Rubin-Vega, Joanna Gleason, and Annaleigh Ashford.[11]
Costumes
As in the TV series, fashion played a significant role in plot and production of the film. Over 300 ensembles were used over the course of the entire film.[12]Patricia Field, who created costume designs for the series, also undertook the job in the film.[13]
Field has stated that she initially was ambivalent to do the film, for monetary and creative reasons.[14]
Field rose to fame particularly after designing for the series from 1998 to 2004, wherein she popularized the concept of using designer clothes with day-to-day fashion.
While dressing the characters for the film, Field decided to stay clear from the latest fashion trends defining the characters and instead focused on the evolution of individual character and the actor portraying it, over the last four years.[14] While Samantha's dressing was influenced by American TV soap opera Dynasty (see Nolan Miller), Jackie Kennedy was the inspiration for Charlotte's clothes. Miranda, according to Field, has evolved the most from the series in terms of fashion. This was influenced significantly by development in actress Cynthia Nixon in past years.[14]
The soundtrack was released May 27, 2008, by New Line Records. The soundtrack includes new songs by Fergie and Jennifer Hudson (who plays Carrie's assistant in the film).
The film's soundtrack debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, the highest debut for a multi-artist theatrical film soundtrack since 2005's Get Rich or Die Tryin',[18] and debuting at number six on the UK Albums Chart, selling to date more than 55,000 copies.
In December 2008, the orchestral score for the film was released, Sex and the City – The Score, containing 18 tracks of original score composed, co-orchestrated, and conducted by Aaron Zigman. While the order of the tracks does not correspond directly to the order that the score is heard in the film, the score soundtrack contains almost every single piece of score that is present in the film.
Release
Premiere
The film's international premiere took place on May 12, 2008, at Odeon West End in London's Leicester Square to an audience of 1700.[19]
It was next premiered at Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on May 15.[20]
The film had its New York City premiere at Radio City Music Hall on May 27, 2008.[21]
Reception
Box office
The film was a commercial success. Opening in 3,285 theaters, the film made $26.93 million in the US and Canada on its first day. The three-day opening weekend total was $57,038,404, aggregating $17,363 per theater.[22]
The film recorded the biggest opening ever for an R-rated comedy and for a romantic comedy, surpassing both American Pie 2 and Hitch,[23] and also for a film starring all women.[24] This was also the fifth-highest opening weekend for an R-rated film, behind The Matrix Reloaded, The Passion of the Christ, 300 and Hannibal.[25] As of March 2010, the film had grossed $152,647,258 at the US and Canadian box office, and $262,605,528 in other markets, bringing the worldwide total gross revenue to $415,252,786, making it the highest-grossing romantic comedy of 2008.[22]
Critical response
Sex and the City received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 49%, based on 182 reviews, with an average score of 5.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sex and the City loses steam in the transition to the big screen, but will still thrill fans of the show."[26]Metacritic gave the film a normalized average score of 53 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[27]
Brian Lowry of Variety said the film "...feels a trifle half-hearted",[28] while Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times stated "the film tackles weighty issues with grace but is still very funny". She praised Michael Patrick King's work saying very few films "are willing to go to such dark places while remaining a comedy in the Shakespearean sense".[29]
Colin Bertram of the New York Daily News dubbed the film a "great reunion", and was happy with the return of "The 'Oh, my God, they did not just do that!' moments, the nudity, the swearing, the unabashed love of human frailty and downright wackiness".[30]
The Chicago Tribune's Jessica Reeves described it as "Witty, effervescent and unexpectedly thoughtful."[31]
Michael Rechtshaffen at The Hollywood Reporter praised the performances of the four leading ladies and said the film kept the essence of the series, but resembled a super-sized episode.[32]
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found the film "a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong — addendum to a show",[33] while The Daily Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu panned the film saying "the ladies have become frozen, Spice Girls-style types - angsty, neurotic, predatory, princess - rather than individuals who might evolve or surprise us".[34] Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail slammed the film commenting on lack of script and adding that the characters "don't perform so much as parade, fixed in their roles as semi-animated clothes hangers on a cinematic runway". He gave the film zero stars out of four.[35]Anthony Lane, a film critic for The New Yorker, called the film a "superannuated fantasy posing as a slice of modern life"; he noted that "almost sixty years after All About Eve, which also featured four major female roles, there is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and friends defining themselves not as Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter did—by their talents, their hats, and the swordplay of their wits—but purely by their ability to snare and keep a man....All the film lacks is a subtitle: "The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe."[36]
Ramin Setoodeh of Newsweek speculated that some of the criticism for the film is derived possibly from sexism: "when you listen to men talk about it (and this is coming from the perspective of a male writer), a strange thing happens. The talk turns hateful. Angry. Vengeful. Annoyed...Is this just poor sportsmanship? I can't help but wonder—cue the Carrie Bradshaw voiceover here—if it's not a case of 'Sexism in the City.' Men hated the movie before it even opened...Movie critics, an overwhelmingly male demographic, gave it such a nasty tongue lashing you would have thought they were talking about an ex-girlfriend...The movie might not be Citizen Kane—which, for the record, is a dude flick—but it's incredibly sweet and touching."[24]
New Line Home Entertainment (distributed by Warner Home Video) released a DVD and Blu-ray release of Sex and the City: The Movie on September 23, 2008.[51] There are two versions of the film released in the US on home video. There is a standard, single disc theatrical cut (the version seen in theaters) which comes in fullscreen or widescreen (in separate editions). Both discs are the same, except for the film presentation. The only features are an audio commentary, deleted scenes, and a digital copy of the film. Also released on the same day as the standard edition is the two-disc special edition, which adds six minutes of footage to the film, along with the commentary from the standard edition DVD and a second disc that contains bonus features, as well as a digital copy of the widescreen theatrical version of the film. The only version of the film released on Blu-Ray is the two-disc extended cut, which is identical to the DVD version of the extended cut. The DVD sold 3,549,461 million copies in 2008 earning a profit of over $72,429,126 million dollars.
On December 9, 2008, New Line Home Entertainment released a third edition of Sex and the City: The Movie. This edition is a 4-disc set entitled Sex and the City: The Movie (The Wedding Collection). The four-disc set features the previously released extended cut of the film on the first disc, the second disc has the bonus features from the extended cut and three additional featurettes, the third disc holds even more special features, and the fourth is a music CD with songs inspired by the film, including the alternative mix of Fergie's "Labels or Love" from the beginning of the film. The set also comes with an exclusive hardcover book, featuring photos and quotes from the film, and a numbered certificate of authenticity in a pink padded box.
A fourth edition was also released in Australia. This set contained the two discs from the Sex and the City: The Movie Special Edition and a bonus 'Sex and the City Inspired' Clutch Bag. This clutch being black in color in a tile or snake skin material.
The DVD has reached the #1 on the UK DVD Top Chart and is the fastest selling DVD release of 2008 in the UK, selling over 920,000 copies in one week. It is way ahead of the 700,000 copies sold for Ratatouille which was, prior to Sex and the City's release, the best selling DVD of 2008 in the UK. Although the record has since been beaten by Mamma Mia!
A third film was announced in December 2016, but in September 2017, Sarah Jessica Parker confirmed that it was not going to happen.[52] The third movie was later replaced by the 2021 series And Just Like That..., with Cattrall not returning.[53]
Notes
^This takes place some years after the events of the Sex and the City television series.
^Nicholls, Owen (January 6, 2009). "The Worst Films of 2008". NME. Archived from the original on September 25, 2022. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
^Sandhu, Sukhdev; Robey, Tim (December 18, 2007). "Worst films of the year 2008". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved December 26, 2008.
