"Sexism and the City"

Even if you don't care about the movie, this commentary on why men are so determined to bash it is a fun read. Below is the first few paragraphs and a link to the full article.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/139889

Newsweek
Jun 3, 2008
Sexism and the City
Ramin Setoodeh

What's up with this vicious bashing of the 'Sex and the City' movie?

"Sex and the City" the movie has done so well at the box office already it's hard not to get carried away. It opened with $56.8 million last weekend, the highest-grossing debut ever for a movie starring women. It's also the first tent-pole blockbuster to rest squarely on a female demographic—85 percent of the audience on opening night, according to a studio estimate. As I wandered into a Manhattan theater on Saturday, crowds of women swarmed and sat in a long hallway, as if they were waiting to pick up the next Harry Potter book. A door opened and out popped a group of newly Sexed fans, who left a screening misty-eyed and jubilant, deeply satisfied to have spent 145 minutes with some old pals.

"Sex and the City" the TV series was a revolution, yadda yadda, because it was one of the rare forms of entertainment that showed women in the flesh (and flesh), with all their vulnerabilities, anxieties and intelligence. But 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. It's not just that they don't want to accompany their significant others to the movie. How dare Carrie and her girls hijack the box office during a time when the Hulk, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the good old boys of the summer usually rule?

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. They flooded www.imdb.com, voting early and often, so that the movie would have a low rating of 3 out of 10 among users before Friday (although now that number is higher, at 4.8). Movie critics, an overwhelmingly male demographic, gave it such a nasty tongue lashing you would have thought they were talking about an ex-girlfriend. "Sex" mustered a 54 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, compared to the 77 percent fresh for the snoozefest that was "Indiana Jones" (a boy's movie! Such harmless fun!).