Review: SEX AND THE CITY 2

Sex and The City 2 (2010)
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon
Written and Directed by: Michael Patrick King

The girls are back and boy have they brought a lot with them: from camels, poorly placed in poor taste, and an alleged ten million dollar wardrobe, to blatant gay stereotypes and even a heap of xenophobia. Too bad there wasn’t any room in Carrie’s Louis Vuitton trunk for plot – or even humor. Instead were left to pick our jaws up off the floor not because of the shocking but insightful humor that made the television series a hit, but because of the way that the film portrays minorities and even its main characters.

The film opens a few months after the events of the first Sex and the City movie (2008); Carrie and Big have gotten married and now she is contemplating “what happens after I do?”. Charlotte has her hands full with her kids, who seem to be getting in the way of her Ralph Lauren vision of domesticity, Miranda feels that her boss is a misogynist and summarily quits her job and tries to spend more time with her son Brady, and Samantha is still having sex with anything that moves, though she has to trick her body into thinking it’s not menopausal with a small satchel of pills.

The film doesn’t really have a plot so much as it has a way to show off over the top outfits and make jokes in poor taste. So it’s more like a series of unrelated vignettes – like the opening scene of the film, in which, Charlotte squeals “her (Carrie’s) gay best friend (Stanford) is marrying my gay best friend (Anthony)!”. As a fan of the series, this is bothersome because Anthony and Stanford never really liked each other; they were polar opposites. As a gay man, this is even more bothersome because it assumes that there are no other available gay men in the city that either of these characters could ever end up with and it creates an excuse to hold the most flamboyant and over the top gay wedding in cinematic history, complete with a gay men’s chorus in all white singing a Broadway song about infidelity, Madonna jokes and even Liza Minnelli and Beyonce – all for a few cheap laughs.

Carrie is in crisis mode because she fears she and Big have become too domestic since he would rather stay home and watch an old movie rather than go out four nights a week. But before Carrie can go out to shop her problems away, Samantha offers a solution not only to Carrie, but to all of the girls – Abu Dhabi, all expenses paid.

No expenses are spared either, as things go from over the top to just plain gaudy: each of the girls gets their own personal Maybach to be escorted around in and her own twenty four hour butler, with the exception of Samantha who gets her very own mincing Middle Eastern minstrel – complete with sashaying hips and Paula Abdul references, which is terrible to do to a gay character but even worse when you consider the way that gay Muslims are persecuted, even in more liberal parts of the Middle East like Abu Dhabi, which often includes imprisonment and execution. This portrayal, again, is just intended for a cheap and easy laugh and nothing more.

Carrie reunites with her former flame Aiden, who happens to be in Abu Dhabi for one reason or another and really emphasizes this meeting with super slow motion.

Perhaps the worst offense of the film is the way that Muslim women and society in general is portrayed and the way that it is understood. The girls gawk at a woman as she lifts her veil to eat fries, Samantha doesn’t understand why deep throating a hookah pipe in public might get her in trouble and perhaps makes one of the worst offenses of the film when she waves a wad of condoms in front of a group of Muslim men as they are heading to pray, screaming about how she has sex and they have to accept it.

It’s sad, that as a fan of the series – I own the entire run on DVD – that Sex and The City has devolved from a clever comedy that allowed women to approach sex and relationships in a new way that has helped to define post-modern attitudes toward sex to an excuse to spend millions of dollars and make their interesting female characters a bunch of dumb Americans traipsing around the Middle East on someone else’s dime.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this movie if you ever enjoyed the show. Get together with your girlfriends and rewatch the series – you’ll feel much better for it.

1 out of 5