Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Sex and the City: The Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Sir Terrence November 10, 2008

I know I should hate Sex in the City; it’s a chick flick on haute steroids. However I did enjoy it, almost as much as watching the series itself. While this movie is about shoes, clothes, apartments and penthouses in New York City, it is also about friends, love, relationships, disappointment, forgiveness, and redemption. This movie is not only witty and funny, but it’s dead serious at points, almost painfully emotional at others. I was very concerned that the series would not translate well to film. But those fears were quickly allayed, as not only did the movie have a nice pace, but the spirit of the series remained intact thanks to the talents of writer/director Michael Patrick King. Those who have never seen the series will not have a hard time related to what is happening on the screen. It however is nice to have a little back story on these wonderful women; it helps understand the nuance of their interactions with one another.

My enthusiasm for this film is not shared. According to Rotten Tomatoes half of those that saw the movie liked it, the other half did not. This is based on the fact that some said the movie lost something in its translation to the big screen. In spite of the rather mediocre reviews, this movie did big business at the box office. It made $26 million in its first day, recording $57 million in its first three days, and $400 million overall worldwide. Not to shabby for an R rated comedy featuring four women.

Four years after the series finale, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) are apartment hunting with the intentions on moving in together. After searching thirty three apartments, they land on a penthouse of which Big agrees to buy. Carrie, worried about her future, and trying to protect herself explains her fears to Big who suggests they get married. Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is living in Los Angeles (Malibu more specifically from what I saw) with her boyfriend Smith (Jason Lewis) who has a successful television show. Samantha spends all of her time on her boyfriend’s career, and has not time for herself, and feels she is not paying enough attention to herself. She desires to have sex with other men, but wants to stay faithful to Smith as well. It also does not help that her next door neighbor is a hot Italian guy who she just lusts after. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is totally happy with her marriage to Harry (Evan Handler), and totally devoted to being a good mother to her adopted child Lily. Miranda is finding it mighty difficult to balancing her life. Between her career, raising her young boy, and being married to Steve her sex life is suffering.

All is not well with the girls as Carrie’s wedding is getting bigger and bigger after a photo shoot featuring wedding gowns for Vogue goes really well, and Vivienne Westwood offers her a special wedding gown after seeing Carrie in the photos. Big being married three previous times, does not like all of the attention the wedding is getting. . Miranda learns that her husband Steve has cheated, and decides to leave him. During the wedding party for Carrie and Big, and after seeing Steve, Miranda, in an emotional upheaval tells Big that he and Carrie are crazy to get married. This plants the seeds of doubt in Big’s mind about getting married. On the day of the wedding, Big decides he cannot get married and does not show up to the ceremony. Carrie who is humiliated and betrayed goes into a deep depression. In an effort to snap Carrie out of the depression the girls decide to go to Mexico, a trip that was supposed to be Carries wedding present to Big.

After returning back to New York after the trip, Carrie decides she needs an assistant to get her life back in order. After seeing a few applicants, Carrie hires Louise (Jennifer Hudson) to help her organize her apartment and basically her business and social life. Charlotte finds out she is pregnant after an extended period of having trouble conceiving. She begins to worry that something will happen to the baby, citing what happen to Carrie as a reason for this. Miranda confesses to Carrie what she told Big at the wedding party. Carrie explodes and does not talk to Miranda for three days. After making up, Miranda decides to go to marriage counseling to save her marriage with Steve. Samantha begins to over eat as a result of her unhappiness with her situation. One day Charlotte sees Big at a restaurant, and the meeting angers her to the point that she goes into labor. This starts a chain of events that leads to redemption for everyone.

Sex and the City: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sex and the City parades down the runway and on to Bluray with a nice 1080p/VC-1 encoding, framed in a 1:78:1 aspect ratio that if nothing else is very clean (almost too much so), with excellent image depth and vivid colors. The print master on this title is very clean, with no pops or scratches to be found anywhere. Colors are bright, vivid, rich, well saturated and expose very rich textures and vibrant deeply saturated hues. Blacks are very deep, stable, and have excellent detail when clothing features highly detailed trimmings. This combination gives the images terrific dynamic range and pop. Contrast can appear hot on occasion, but it does not detract from the image quality. Flesh tones look fully natural, and the sharpness of the images shows every wrinkle and skin defect on each actors faces. Overall the picture quality was very sharp, but on occasion does not fully reveal fine detail. I also saw some signs of edge enhancement and halo's around straight lines, but it only occurred in some scenes, and does not immediately pop out at you. I give this a very good picture quality rating, but the edge enhancement does take it down a notch or two even though not easily noticeable.

Sex and the City: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sex in the City boasts two tracks offering two levels of resolution. Audio choices are a 5.1 24/48khz Dolby TrueHD track, and a 640kbps 5.1 Dolby Digital track. Obviously the TrueHD track is the one to listen to. While this is mostly a talkie, dialog is always clearly rendered. There is occasional surround usage to support the different scenes and outdoor ambience, but it is subtle and sporadic, but no less effective. LFE is used sparingly, but does support the overall mix when used. The mix in my opinion is pretty conservative, but it is very effective and certainly on par with other romantic comedies out there.

Sex and the City: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

First up is the Audio Commentary with Director Michael Patrick King. While I would have preferred hearing the cast make their comments as well, King does very well in articulating the difficulty of adapting the television series to film form. He thoroughly goes over each character, their interactions, and the controversial ending with Mr. Big. Following that is the Featurette: "The Fabulous Fashion of Sex and the City" (16 minutes) was a much watch, as this movie is as much about the fashion as it was about the people wearing it. This is followed by another Featurette "Fergie in the studio" (2 minutes) which shows Fergie in the studio revamping the movie theme song. It is however much too short to be anything more than a less than fluff piece. Lastly is Alternate Scenes (4 minutes) which if included, would not have added a thing to an already too long movie. . Next up is The City which features an interactive map that shows various locales in New York City, and lastly Dish It! which is an interactive pop up feature that provide facts, trivia, all of the juicy stuff about the film. All extra content is presented in 1080i, and VC-1 encoded.

Sex and the City: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like Dreamgirls, this movie was a pleasure to review. For me on a personal basis there was a lot here I could relate to. I lived in New York City for most of my life, so I understand the apartment/penthouse search. Being somewhat of a clothes horse myself, I understood the love of fashion and clothes. Having two best friends from childhood, I understood the bonds of friendship. Who does not understand disappointment of being let down by another person? As the old adage goes, I laughed, I cried, and I had a good time doing both. For those into the television series, this is a must have disc. Even those of you who have not seen the television series, and are not fans of the series, it would be a good rental to sit down with the significant other and enjoy. It may not be a movie that everyone will enjoy, but I say give it a shot, you are sure to at least laugh your head off at the clever dialog, even if you are not totally into clothes, apartments, or shoes.