The filmmakers behind Sex and the City 2 want you to think the movie is about female empowerment, and how to wield it.
It's actually about totally vacuous assholes wearing clothes that will look idiotic in 10 years.
The first film adapted from the HBO series, a show I enjoyed, was a mixed bag. It had its charms, but was too damn long—and poor Charlotte (Kristin Davis) shitting her pants was a bit much.
With this sequel, Sex and the City wears out its welcome with a movie that embarrasses each of its once-enjoyable characters. It feels like a thrown-together, rushed parody of the show.
Predictably, it opens with Carrie (the still-hot Sarah Jessica Parker) having marital troubles with Mr. Big (Chris Noth). The stupid bastard doesn't know how to treat his wife. He puts his shoes on the couch (Gasp!), wants to stay home after a hard day's work (Whoa!) and has the gall to buy Carrie a flat-screen TV instead of jewelry for their anniversary (Kill him!). Carrie pisses and moans, making me wish that Big would just flip her the bird, grab his cool flat-screen and get the hell out of there.
Elsewhere, Samantha (the annoying Kim Cattrall, moaning all of her dialogue) has secured a crazy-ass trip for her and her mates to visit Abu Dhabi—which means many shots of the girls in crazy turbans and genie pants. It also means the girls spend much of the movie outside of Manhattan, which sucks.
This movie is like a boxing match for which I was ill-prepared. By the time Samantha made her first dreadful appearance, I took a pretty good shot to the temple. When Carrie started bitching at Mr. Big over minutiae, I took a low blow, and when the girls belted out "I Am Woman" during an Abu Dhabi karaoke session, the film caught me with a haymaker that put me down for the count.
It's stuff like that pitiful karaoke moment that proves writer-director Michael Patrick King must've started this movie with a script consisting of Post-its and scribbles on the back of cereal boxes. His script actually calls for Carrie to bump into ex-boyfriend Aidan (John Corbett) while buying shoes in some Abu Dhabi back alley. Yeah, that's gonna happen.
A big subplot involves Samantha having hot flashes due to menopause. The film tries to milk laughs out of her gobbling hummus for the chickpea estrogen, and putting yams all over her face. The sight is not pretty.
Don't give me any crap about not being in this film's demo. The demo for Sex and the City used to be smart, inquisitive males and females who liked daring humor about sex and relationships (with maybe the occasional joke about farts). Talk about your vagina or penis; make a clever observation about Manhattan nightlife and how it weighs on your soul; and then perhaps emit a light fart. Laughter ensues.
But now, the damn franchise is targeting people who like stupid-ugly hats and jokes about full-on pants-shitting. No, Kristin Davis doesn't shit her pants this time, but she's the center of an embarrassing cameltoe joke. She falls off a camel, and then the girls laugh at her cameltoe. Get it?
The best part of the movie—the only part of the movie I enjoyed—was Liza Minnelli singing and dancing to a Beyoncé song at a gay wedding early in the film. This had me sitting up in my seat, thinking we might have had something with this flick. Then Liza went away, and the "plot" kicked in, leaving us alone with Carrie and her cabal of lame caricatures.
It's time to stop.
The Coast Halifax
