If Sex and the City is the Future, Can it Be Less Pink?

By Katey Rich

This is normally the spot for today's film news, but it's something of a slow news day, plus I've had something else on my mind since Sunday. Well, since last week, really. That's when the publicity blitz for Sex and the City reached a fever pitch, and box-office prognosticators were falling over themselves trying to account for the massive levels of interest audiences were showing in the film. Well, at least female audiences were showing interest.

And on Monday morning, when Sex and the City came through the finish line with a huge $56 million opening weekend, analysts were almost uniformly slack-jawed. And women, myself included, sat back smugly and said, "Uh, duh. Women are 50% of the population, and nearly all of them wanted to see this movie. How could it not have a huge opening?"

Smart predictions have Sex and the City declining significantly in its second weekend, which will make it much less of a box-office powerhouse than, say, Indiana Jones. But the performance of a straight-up chick flick as if it were a summer tentpole could be hugely significant, provided female audiences let it happen that way. They came out in droves for a movie that, for all its flaws, treats women of all ages as worthy of being sexy, funny, and powerful. And if they keep supporting movies in the same vein, they could have the power to change the way Hollywood operates.

Conventional wisdom has it that women simply don't come out on opening weekend the way fanboys do, or even families do. The wisdom is right, but it's also missing the point. Women don't come out because they don't have a reason to-- either all the movies are targeted at families and fanboys, or the few "chick flicks" are so predictable and tired, women could get the same experience staying home with Bridget Jones's Diary on DVD. Sex and the City proved that women are capable of rounding up the girlfriends and having a night out at the movies; they just need a good reason to bother.

So I've got a few hopes as Warner Bros. and the rest of the industry try to figure out what to make of this whole "how the other half lives" revelation. First, please do not make a Sex and the City sequel. The law of diminishing returns will destroy you. Second, please take the good parts of Sex and the City-- the empowerment, the friendship, the wry humor-- and translate it to other female-focused films. Ignore the commercialism, the randy talk and the product placement-- those were elements of the series even the most die-hard fans were tired of by the end.

And finally, don't treat this as an anomaly. Yes, Sex and the City already had a huge built-in fanbase that did crazy things like buy Sex and the City board games. But it's a success that can be repeated, and not by trotting out the same old romantic comedy tropes. The whole reason the series was a success was that it was so fresh, addressing relationships in a way television had never dared to do. The movies still haven't caught up, actually daring to release a gender-reversed version of a Julia Roberts hit from 11 years ago (that was Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor, since you've probably already forgotten it existed). Judd Apatow has proven that raunchiness and romance can mix when it comes to boys, but Carrie and company proved it ten years ago for the women. What's taken the movies so long to jump on board?

And now that my DVD set of the full series has arrived in the mail, and my review of the movie is finished, I'm hopefully done writing about this movie. I'm always happy to immerse myself in the rest of the summer's testosterone-fueled offerings, but even happier now with the thought, however optimistic, that next summer it might be little bit different.