The
stunning box office take of 2008’s cinematic adaptation of the cable
sitcom Sex and the City was heralded as a strike for feminism
everywhere. After summers filled with Transformers, Terminators, comic
book heroes and other testosterone-driven bombast, the unexpected
success of the big screen adventures of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and
Samantha was a big heads-up to Hollywood that if you give the ladies
what they want, they will come out to the pictures in droves.
Sadly,
outside of a few bad movies about shopping, cooking, schmaltzy romances
and sparkly vampires, there hasn’t exactly been the windfall of quality
female-oriented projects that one might have hoped since then. So, with
all the anticipation of a new Birkin shipment at Hermčs, the world’s
women awaited their chance to slip back into Carrie Bradshaw’s Jimmy
Choos with the arrival of Sex and the City 2. Unfortunately for these
ladies, this waste of celluloid isn’t worth the blisters.
Here’s
the low-down; now into the “terrible twos” of their marriage, Carrie
begins to question her life of domestic bliss with her hard-sought Mr.
Big (now mundanely referred to as John). His enjoyment of the
peace and quiet of a simple evening on the couch, watching TV with the
Mrs. grates on the easily bored Carrie. Well, you can’t keep M(r)s.
Excitement down for long: A business trip calls Samantha to Abu Dhabi
on an all-expense paid excursion of luxury, which of course, our
resourceful PR maven was able to finagle to include her three besties. Off the girls fly across the Arabian Desert, leaving all their loves and
cares behind, but not their amazingly extensive wardrobes. That’s
pretty much it.
There’s some hodgepodge about Carrie bizarrely running
into an old love in the middle of the Abu Dhabi bazaar and the
predictable temptations therein. However this is clearly not the focus,
because for more than two-thirds of the film we are treated to the girls
essentially posing in a very, very long commercial (2 hours, 24
minutes) for United Arab Emirates tourism. Of course, you do have
nyphomaniacally-inclined Samantha along, so naturally there will be some
sitcom-like international incident as the girls end up having to run for
their lives to keep from being stoned in the middle of the marketplace.
By the time this happens, you’re kind of rooting for the
fundamentalists.
Almost
an insult to the very audiences that made the first film such a
phenomenon, this movie has ‘cashing in’ written all over it. There
is almost nothing to recommend it, not even the clothes. None of the charm, heart or fun so
evident in the original film ever made it past the velvet rope on this
sorry sequel. There is simply no reason for this movie; the film is
utterly pointless. Beginning with a gay wedding where the main
characters reel off lame puns and seem to wait for canned laughter, the
comedy here is as scanty as Samantha’s morals. Actually, the only good
scene in the movie occurs here, with Liza Minnelli turning up to
officiate and later perform a snazzy version of ‘Single Ladies’, working
Beyonce’s Bob Fosse-ripped moves as if the director himself was whipping
her 64-year-old bones into shape.
I hope I don’t shock anyone by
revealing that the major demographic for Sex and the City is women and
gay men; I note this because I found it terribly disturbing that the
locale chosen for this luxury getaway is in the United Arab Emirates,
where homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment and death, and women
are still second-class citizens required to hide behind the burka. All
the failed jokes and unrealistic stances for American feminism –
including one character defiantly brandishing her Costco-size pack of
condoms and an uncomfortable-looking, excruciatingly cringe-worthy, “I
Am Woman” karaoke production number – can’t wash away that stain. Why
the filmmakers chose to situate this story here out of any place in the
world is a real question. Mind you, while set in Abu Dhabi, filming
actually took place in Morocco because the production was not allowed
into the UAE. Still, upon the ladies’ arrival in the Middle East, there
is a good twelve minutes spent showing off the incredible lavishness of
Arab tourism. After the first six minutes or so, I was waiting for a
phone number pop up on the screen advising me to make my plane
reservations to the “new Middle East” today. The lack of a real reason
for all four of them to be there other than just an extreme getaway from
their domestic woes makes this whole excursion even more bizarre and
uneasily contrived. Regarding the rest of the screenplay, there is
absolutely nothing here we haven’t seen before, and in some cases, as
with Carrie’s boredom and wanderlust, makes what’s meant to be a plot
all the more pathetic. Everything feels false and regurgitated and
there’s not one honest laugh or emotion in the entire affair.
The
combined appeal of the Fashionista Four is still formidable despite
being trapped in this unfortunate film: Cynthia Nixon warms up nicely
in an improvement over the last outing and Kim Cattrall still manages to
devour her scenes regardless of the stale, forced puns emitting from her
blood red lips. On the other hand, Sarah Jessica Parker tries her
darndest, but chained to this awful script, Carrie is simply charmless
and unlikable. Being certainly old enough to know better, the
character’s whingeing on about losing “the Sparkle” she and her newish
husband have, when all the man wants to do after a busy day of making
millions is spend time with his wife and relax, comes off as tiresome,
selfish and bratty. In a further show of the film’s off-ness, it’s also
strange that New York City, practically the fifth cast member on Sex and
the City -- and the town in the flipping title -- has less face time
than Liza M.’s cameo with most of the scenes there shot in small
flashbacks. Next time, stay home ladies, there’s no place like it and
no place for this movie in anyone’s summer viewing season.
Shame
on the writers of this soulless drivel for trying to pass this Canal
Street bootleg sow’s ear off as a genuine Alexander McQueen silk purse.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
May 27th,
2010
Click here for our far more favourable review of 2008's Sex and the City
.
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