Movie Review - 'Sex and the City 2'

Sex and the City 2 Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon Directed by Michael Patrick King Rated R

Littering the skyline of Pyongyang is the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel. The anything-but-humble pyramid stands 105 stories, broke ground in 1987, and when it consumed a reported 2% of the entire gross domestic product of North Korea, construction was halted in 1992. At that time, $750 million had been spent on a structure that had no foreseeable finish line. It remained an unoccupied safety hazard for 16 years until private funds were secured to finish by, say, 2012 what’s been called the worst building in the world. Terrible things can happen when you throw money at something before thinking it through. In a more figurative sense, Sex and the City 2 is an equally large monument to waste. The four main characters, so well-written for television, are reduced to unfunny caricatures of themselves, the story has almost no structure, the dialogue is clearly uninspired, and the production spent a whopping $10 million…just on the wardrobe. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is getting accustomed to the quiet married life; Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) is fighting menopause; Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) is ill-prepared to be a mother to toddlers; and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) is juggling parenthood and her career. Certainly, there’s plenty to explore within these stories. After all, the show spent seven years establishing the characters on these paths. So how does Sex and the City 2 handle them? Not at all. Instead, the girls take an all-expenses paid trip to Abu Dhabi. Well of course they do. The charm and intelligence of the series was how female viewers could identify with the characters and their problems. There was someone on television going through the same stupid relationship drama or exploring some taboo. That was probably very comforting. It was certainly something to latch on to, which is why – in bars and restaurants across America around the turn of this century – it was so common to hear women refer to themselves as the “Carrie” or the “Charlotte” of their group. Men, wisely, gravitated to the “Samantha.” The complexities of Sex and the City evaporated when the first movie hit, and in this wretched sequel the subtleties are gone, too. There used to be a longing for a pair of Jimmy Choo pumps or the decision between a superfluous-if-stylish garment and something more necessary. But now, these four women have everything they want. They’re driven around the desert in $400,000 Maybachs and have manservants at their beck and call. They rub elbows with Miley Cyrus and sing “I Am Woman” at a jazzed-up karaoke bar in the Middle East, Carrie Bradshaw adorned in a $51,000 ensemble. There’s irony that the 30-minute sitcom could so easily resolve difficult topics that might run a clumsy hour with less talented writing, but this film, which has nothing to offer in terms of depth or conflict, can’t even wrap it up in under two-and-a-half hours. It’s not a motion picture so much as it is a catalog. Some movies miss the target audience, but rarely has a film known its audience so well as this and chosen to completely disregard it. Where is the way into these four lives for the women who loved the show? Hell, where is the spirit of the show for the women who loved the show? This appalling movie, which is lousy on its own merits but even worse when you consider all it has squandered, is more than anything just an expensive working vacation for its stars. Watching it drone on and on felt like having an abscessed tooth removed with a dull, hot fiberglass toothpick.

Comments

[Orinn]

zero...I'm not sure I have ever seen a zero.
I remember 1/2 and ape for Aliens vs Predators, but not any zeros.

At least I learned about the worst building in the world from reading this.

[Get The Big Picture]

Disaster Movie was a zero. Love Guru...

[Jeremy w]

I for one disagree with colin. This movie at least deserves some accolades for getting seabiscuit to stand on hind legs for two hours, move her lips with the sound, and to be able to get those hoofs into 5000 dollar shoes.

[veronchiquita]

Jeremy's comment is hilarious... seabiscuit.. LMAO

[Josh]

I always thought Sarah Jessica Parker looks more like a shoe than a horse.

[Emo]

@Jeremy

HA!

[mfan]

The worst movie that I've seen in 2010. And that includes The Spy Next Door which made me hate it's director, Brian Levant.