My View + A Review: Lipstick Jungle

 

 Google “Lipstick Jungle” and you’ll get a 50/50 smattering of “Lipstick Jungle”/”Cashmere Mafia. That’s not a good sign.

During my viewing of “Lipstick Jungle” last night, the newest “Sex and the City” spawn, I couldn’t help wondering what the critics would make of it all. I knew that they were chomping at the bit to finally pit these two chick-lit greats (“Cashmere Mafia” and the aforementioned “Lipstick“) against eachother, and, admittedly, so was I.

I read through various reviews of the “Lipstick” today, many comparing the two shows. Below, you will find the one that most echos my feelings (almost 100%) about the two shows: Neither wins, but “Lipstick” has more heart… I cried multiple times (although, to be fair, I am not a good indicator of these things because, I mean, is it really normal to cry picking out a birthday card? No).  Enjoy the Toronto Star review below.

They’re powerful women who cry a lot.

So this is what Sex and the City has wrought: a decade after Carrie Bradshaw and her best friends forever put Dior frocks and Louboutin heels in the Zeitgeist, here we are in 2008 with not one but two pedigreed clones.

Last month, ABC’s Cashmere Mafia arrived with executive producer Darren Star, the man who created the Sex and the City show. And now Lipstick Jungle (NBC, A-Channel, 10 tonight) follows with executive producer Candace Bushnell, the woman who created the Sex and the City novel.

So even before Lipstick Jungle puckers up, our expectations are smear-proof: gal pals, New York, glamorous wardrobes, cocktails, career snafus, social dilemmas, relationship problems, a generous sprinkling of female camaraderie and, yes, tears.

The only deviation? Here, the foursome is actually a threesome.

Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields) is a film executive who runs Parador Pictures while juggling family demands; Nico Reilly (Kim Raver), the editor-in-chief of Bonfiremagazine, is trapped inside a sexless marriage; and Victory Ford (Lindsay Price) is a fashion designer struggling to recapture her runway mojo as she begins dating the wealthy Joe Bennett (Andrew McCarthy).

After their influence is established – all three land on Wall Street magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women” – it’s time to unveil their woes.

Cashmere Mafia: Wannabe That Will Never Be

When I heard the rumblings about Cashmere Mafia, marketed as a pseudo Sex and the City, I was ecstatic. Ever since my beloved SATC went off the air 4+ years ago, there has been an empty place in my heart and my weekend nights (ya ya, so what if Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte were the best part of my weekend? Don’t judge.). Cashmere Mafia, produced by Darren Star, was a pick to click.

In theory.

Lucy Liu is Mia, an aggressive magazine publisher and orchestrator of the titular quartet — power-playing pals since business school. (She’s the Carrie, naturally.) Caitlin (the Charlotte at heart, trying to be the Samantha), a cosmetics exec who spends less time at her job than she does contemplating whether she’s a lesbian. As Juliet, (the Miranda, right down to the red hair) is the COO of a hotel group, and befallen with every put-upon woman cliché: mistaken for the secretary and saddled with a cheating husband and snooty daughter. And Zoe (she’s the…well, she’s actually Diane Keaton in Baby Boom), a harried mother of two whose ear must be permanently deformed from the wireless earpiece she wears. We get it. You’re smart, driven, and can do it all while wearing 4 inch stilettos, multi-tasking on your Blackberry and sipping a martini. Yawn. Maybe I just can’t relate… the hottest of the hot Gucci bag, or rent for 3 months…?

It all should work in a Desperate Career Women sort of way, but it really, really doesn’t. The humor is forced: A sample Mia sex-pun groaner is ”Kinda like a little bone voyage.” Carrie Bradshaw she is not. And the plundering of SATC touchstones, down to the jaunty music (lawsuit just waiting to happen) and slo-mo shot of the four women sashaying down a red carpet, are distractingly blatant. (This particular staging doesn’t simulate Sex as much as it looks like a challenge from America’s Next Top Model.)

I might not love this one, or find it terribly satisfying, but, it will keep the bed warm for Candice Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle which will premiere February 7th. MSNBC has a promising vs. article here.