The latter, Sex in the City (2008), seen by millions after it was ushered into theaters with a high profile marketing campaign to the faithful following of many a “girls” group, was a bomb critically but a box office bonanza. The Visitor (2008), on the other hand, with little marketing, no fan base, and few viewers, was a critics’ favorite when it came out, as it still is with us.

It was the success of the first movie that gave us its sequel, Sex in the City 2 (2010). a movie which not only got panned by reviewers, but which also did not live up to box office expectations. If you didn’t see the Sex in the City sequel when it came out, skip this DVD and instead go rent The Visitor instead. Oh don’t get us wrong, though we weren’t regulars when Sex and the City was on TV, we do think that some of its past episodes raised good questions for viewers to discuss, particularly about friendship.
But the two movies fail to transcend their shallowness. Although the first film begins with our narrator and protagonist, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), saying, “All girls come to New York seeking two ‘L’s’—labels and love,” the films prove to be less about relationships and more about hyper consumerism and materialism. World travel, $500 dollar handbags, $25,000 wedding dresses and several million dollar Manhattan apartments seem to be these women’s be all and end all.

But lest we be too hard on this popular tele-drama about four once single friends’ search for love (as Carrie says) or themselves (in our view), this cinematic experience is not that much different than many of those old 3 o’clock matinee romance movies or the ever popular “chic flicks” like Cinderella or Pretty Woman. “Girls” of all ages have been encouraged to idealize and materialize their quest for love, and men have followed along as voyeurs. Perhaps we would not have felt compelled to such cultural criticism if we had seen the first of these films by itself and the sequel had mercifully not been made. Then the first movie might have seemed to be simply harmless, mindless entertainment. But first seeing Sex and the City 1 in close proximity to The Visitor and then seeing its shallow sequel, we were appalled at how vacuous and anemic notions of love and friendship had become.

Trying to attract the next generation of “material girls,” Miley Cyrus was cast in the sequel. If the teens in your life want to see this movie, this might be the only reason to rent it. But if you do, watch the movie together, and then discuss (gently of course) the consumerist, materialist, body-obsessed, narcissistic, self-absorbed themes that are present. But in our view, teens don’t need to see a film that affirms the worst traits of adolescence -- traits which most teens hopefully grow out of, but in which these NY ladies (and their men) are stuck (just like many of us in the church). Especially in times of worldwide economic crisis, we and our teens need to hear and see models of a different kind – models of self-sacrifice, not self-indulgence.

Better than seeing the narcissistic, even if campy, glitter of Sex and the City2, we would recommend renting on DVD the small human story, The Visitor. In The Visitor we are ushered into the lives of three unique individauals: Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) a quiet, recently widowed and very isolated, professor who teaches in Connecticut; a young, ever optimistic and kind, Syrian named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) who makes music in New York; and Zainab (Danai Gurira), Tarek’s Senegalese girlfriend who designs and sells jewelry to make ends meet. What seems like a disparate list of characters actually becomes an unusual but deeply connected experience of family (a common theme for the film’s writer/director Tom McCarthy. See also his film The Station Agent).

Walter has to travel to New York City to attend a conference and decides to stay in the apartment that he keeps in Manhattan (his wife had been a professional pianist who often stayed there). Arriving late one night, he finds a young couple living in his apartment (they have been paying rent to some real estate scam artist taking advantage of undocumented immigrants). They immediately begin packing, but Walter feeling sorry for them, eventually invites them to spend the night. By the next day he wonders if they could really use a break and invites them to stay in his place until they can find another. Though his days at the conference are dull, he actually looks forward to returning to his apartment each evening. An unlikely friendship develops between the stoic Vale and the vibrant Tarek.

Music is an important element of the story and film. Walking through Washington Square Park one day, Walter hears two boys drumming on the bottoms of plastic buckets. He enjoys listening to them and to Tarek as he plays his African drums. Tarek even begins to give drum lessons to Walter. Some of Walter's early attempts to play are humorous, but with time and nurture he develops into a committed student.
With music and relationship back in his life, Walter, for the first time since his wife’s death, is feeling again. Just how deeply becomes apparent when Tarek is arrested by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. Tarek’s mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), arrives from Michigan to help, and stays with Walter. Another human presence of a loving mother only serves to humanize Walter further.

The Visitor, however, doesn’t create a fantasy world regarding immigration. It is a film that instead asks the viewer to simply put a human face on the issue. Stepping into worlds that are “foreign” to them, each of the four main characters at some point in the film is an "outsider." Yet they each yearn for the “home” they have had to leave behind, and seek to create a new one with the friends around them.

Christians should resonate with this story, for our Savior was barely born, when his family had to flee their home to sojourn in Egypt as immigrants. His life, too, was that of an outsider, one ultimately without a home on this earth. And yet Jesus calls all peoples to lay down their burdens and to come “home.” He was and is the great Visitor.