Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I know I jokingly say sometimes about films I don't like some variation on the idea that I don't know where to start picking it apart. But with the horrifically shallow SEX AND THE CITY 2, truer sentiments have never been spoken. This movie is literally about nothing. I don't mean it's not about anything important or significant or noble; I don't need that in my escapist entertainment. No, this film is has no heart, no brain, and an empty soul. And let me throw one more thought your way; this might be one of the most racist, anti-Arab films you will ever have the displeasure of sitting through. Maybe that's a good place to start...
SEX AND THE CITY 2 spends roughly half of its 145-minute running time openly mocking Arab traditions, no matter how dated and out of step with the world at large they may be. Is there a place in the world for films that question and defy the terrible ways that women are treated in some regions of the Middle East? Without question. Is that place writer-director Michael Patrick King's script and movie? For the sake of argument, let's say "Why not?" Here's why not. Because the portrait that SEX AND THE CITY 2 (I'm talking about this movie specifically, and not the series or first film) paints of Western women makes them appear to be the most appalling, whiny, vapid, materialistic creatures on the face of the earth. If you're going to criticize something, at least offer up a viable alternative that isn't worse. I'll get off my soapbox, but dammit this movie goes into some truly culturally offensive places.
That aside, the movie presents us with a series of problems our four heroines must overcome. Let's list them. Golden Girl Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is trying to take as many natural supplements and hormones as she can to fool her body into feeling younger. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) quits her law firm job because her boss is a chauvinist pig. Charlotte (Kristen Davis) is afraid her husband might have an interest in the hot nanny (Alice Eve). And Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is afraid she and her jockey, I mean husband (Chris Noth), might be becoming a boring old couple that never leaves their multi-million-dollar apartment that she spent two years decorating. Here are some other random issues that crop up during the film: hot flashes (guess who), a baby who won't stop crying unless the nanny is around, women who enjoy time away from their kids, kissing an old boyfriend, getting kicked out of a $22,000-per-night hotel suite in Abu Dhabi, and the list continues.
You know what I call those problems? The kind only rich people have--or, in the case of SEX AND THE CITY 2, rich white people. These are not real problems; these are problems that idiots who don't have real problems make up to seem like they know struggle and hardship. Am I supposed to feel even a tiny bit sorry or get any sense of drama from a story featuring four successful, rich people that are whisked away on a private jet to a Middle Eastern all-expenses-paid paradise for a week? Boo fucking hoo.
I almost lost my shit very early in this movie. The worst offender in the pity party parade is Carrie herself. For example, when Mr. Big buys her a thoughtful anniversary gift, she makes a face and says something about how jewelry would have been a better gift. And then again, when Big takes a cue from Carrie after she spends two days away from him in her old apartment to write and suggests that they spend two days apart every week to do their own thing (him: watch TV and relax; her: hang with girls, write, shop), she loses it a little bit and then takes a weeklong trip with the girls. Way to passive-aggressively over compensate, Bradshaw. Then on the trip, she just happens to run into old flame Aidan (John Corbett), and they make out a little, after which she feels terribly guilty. I was ready to throttle her.
Okay, so let's consider SEX AND THE CITY 2 as pure entertainment. I might have laughed twice, and I'm pretty sure that was more at the grandiose awfulness of it all more than anything else. The gay wedding that opens the film is pretty amusing, especially Liza Minnelli's trainwreck of an appearance. Any potential acting in this film comes in the form of a brief cameo by Penelope Cruz, who is abruptly taken out of the film as suddenly as she appeared. By my count, there is one scene that I responded to--a throwaway moment between Charlotte and Miranda at the bar in their hotel room confessing how guilty they don't feel about being away from their kids. It's a rare moment in this film--the characters slow down, think complete thoughts, and voice it coherently. The laughs in that scene are earned, and not simply treated as a punchline.
Carrie and Samantha are walking cliches at this point. And I'm sorry, but Kim Cattrall's sexy speak has gone from funny/seductive to creepy. When Samantha overtly comes on to a guy in the movie, and he pretends to respond favorably, you can almost see him choke back the vomit. I know this is supposed to be a movie about fashion and decadence and girl power, all of which I can appreciate when it's done with a fiber of dignity or a point. SEX AND THE CITY 2 has neither. And I realize I'm not the demographic for this movie, but that doesn't mean I can't measure its value. There's a scene in which a scantily clad Samantha finds herself picking up the spilled contents of her purse (including loads of condoms) in the middle of a Middle Eastern marketplace. Is it wrong that for the brief moment I thought that the men screaming at and surrounding her might start picking up rocks? Of course it is. It's culturally insensitive of me to even have such thoughts about Middle Easterners or women. This movie doesn't get that. This is an awful, awful, awful movie.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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