Dear Movie Critics,
Unless you’re a middle-aged woman, stuck with kids and/or other things that breathe whose daily existence depends on you getting up every morning and whose last big shopping splurge was at T.J. Maxx’s please shut up. You should not be reviewing Sex and the City 2 because you don’t understand why, regardless of what you write, women will go to see the movie. Yes, I know the box office take is down. But, trust me the air-conditioned movie theaters playing SATC 2 will have women sitting in those popcorn soiled seats, taking leftover Easter candy they smuggled in out of their knock off designer handbags and washing it down with six-dollar Diet Cokes all summer.
We do not go to see SATC for complex plot lines, exceptional, erudite dialogue, or Hitchcockian endings. This, my naive critic, is the three F’s of why we go to see SATC movies: Fashion, Friendship, and Fornication.
Fashion: Most of us spend our shopping time toiling away at Target, the aforementioned T.J. Maxx and if were feeling extravagant Ann Taylor Loft clearance racks. This is because we will drop $40 on a pair of jeans for our 9-year-old daughter at Justice (the super “almost slutty” store for the elementary school girl), but we can’t bring ourselves to pay full price for anything that we might wear. So, SATC is pure fashion porn. Yes, we know the outfits in the movie look like they were all bought at a transvestite’s tag sale or were Project Runway “carnival couture” discards. Accessories wise the movie was a minefield. What was up with the hats? Most of them didn’t even fit the actresses heads. Really, Charlotte with the straw hat pool-side in Abu Dhabi. She looked like she was in a community theatre production of Mary Poppins. The clothes for the camel ride sequence were perhaps the worst. It was as if someone waved a magic wand and all my daughter’s mismatched, polyester Barbie doll clothes became life sized and mated with her former dance recital costumes then morphed themselves into the SATC wardrobe trailer. But, see that’s one of the reasons why we go to see the movie – tacky designer clothes. It makes us feel better that we’re not missing out (that much) with our less than Dior label closet and it feels soooo good.
Friendship: Non judgmental, long-term relationships are rare. Women crave stories about female friendships. Without our core friends most of us would be on a regimen of hard-core pharmaceuticals. Contrary to what you hear – your husband can not be your best friend. Because no straight man wants to hear you rage on the phone about the mom at your kid’s school that you’re pretty sure was whispering about you at the school picnic. I mean, for real, she was talking about you because she kept looking over her shoulder at you and then did what sounded like a pity giggle with another mom you can’t stand. Your husband also does not understand the joy of your recent stellar purchase of a half price Coach bag from Ross Dress for Less nor is he any good at talking you down when you think your son could grow up to be the “Unabomber -The Sequel.”
Fornication: I can only speak for myself here, but I feel I’m not alone. For most middle-aged moms it’s been a mighty long time since we’ve “experienced” someone other than our spouse. Before marriage, I’m sure many of us were sexually selective. Let’s just say in my case I could be considered sexually remedial or at the very least sex special ed. I came of age when AIDS had just hit the dating scene hard, attended a tattle tale Christian University and had a mother who gave me a sex talk, that to this day I still have Vietnam-esque flashbacks that result in occasional night terrors. Her sex talk is so frightening that the Catholic church should put her on retainer to keep the priests in line. All of this makes me and other moms enjoy living vicariously through the SATC sexploits. We could never be Samantha. Most of us don’t have the self-confidence, skill, stamina or flexibility and much like your car requires a new engine after about 150,000 miles any woman who has that much sex would need her pelvic floor muscles rebuilt after, say, age 50. But, we enjoy her libido, her naked joie de vivre and still smoking hot body. Most women my age delight in hearing about anyone who is getting some be it at the movies or in real life.
There are also various miscellaneous reasons we go to see SATC. There’s comparing our aging process versus the four SATC chicks. It is beyond gratifying to see the SATC women all aging right along with the rest us. In this movie everybody was looking “middle-agey” attractive. They all had eye crinkle wrinkles, lines on their foreheads and breasts that weren’t under their chin. Yahoo! Time is not just “marching on” on my face. The time commitment it takes to see the movie is also a winner. It’s two and half hours long. If you add in drive time of 15 minutes to the move theatre and back, the movie trailers and wait time for concessions then you are conservatively out of the house, without your children, for about three hours and thirty minutes. That’s huge. Another bonus your husband, in no way, wants to come with you. SATC’s uber chick flick status is a man repellant which means more alone time. Alone time in the summer for a middle-aged mom is about as rare as sex in the bathtub – not going to happen.
I hope Dear Movie Critics that this letter has helped explain why all of your negative reviews have about as much chance of keeping moms of a certain age from seeing SATC 2 as me wearing a swimsuit without spanx. So conserve your energy and stop bashing this chick flick. A better use of your time and talent would be explaining the movie studio brain trust behind “MacGruber.”
Thanks for reading my blog! If you’re on Facebook you can go to Snarky in the Suburbs and click on like. It’s a great way to get updated on the newest postings. Also, it feeds my low self-esteem (seriously). Opps, I almost forgot I’m now on Twitter @snarkynsuburbs. See you on Friday for “I Dropped the F Bomb at the Elementary School Picnic.”
Snarky in the Suburbs 