Sex and the City 2 Review

“More like Sex and the Shitty!”

That was going to be the opening line to my review of “Sex and the City 2” before I actually saw the thing this past weekend. What?! The reviews were absolutely terrible. And don’t act like you’ve never made your mind up about a movie before you saw it.

After having watched the much-anticipated(?) sequel, I’ll be damned if I actually kind of enjoyed myself. (This review is brought to you by “Low Expectations.”)

Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristen Davis and Cynthia Nixon reprise their iconic roles in the sequel, which curiously takes the foursome out of New York City for most of the movie after Samantha (Cattrall) secures a vacation in Abu Dhabi for her friends. (“More like Sex and the Desert”?) Though I didn’t love the idea of leaving NYC — the city really was a character throughout most of the show — the sequel made enough improvements over the original movie for me to overlook that faux-pas.

My two biggest problems with the first flick were 1.) the four main characters spent way too much time apart (Samantha was in freakin’ L.A.!) and 2.) they forgot to make it funny. The sequel smartly remedies point #1 by whisking the four women away to a foreign country so that they’d have no choice but to hang out together. As for point #2 — I guess it’s up to you (and your tolerance of painful puns like “Lawrence of My Labia” and “Abu Dhabi Doo!”) to decide how funny the movie actually was, but at least they tried! (Seriously — those puns are guaranteed to make you audibly groan and shake your head.)

Unfortunately, the movie is not able to escape all the problems that plagued its predecessor — mainly the fact that there’s no reason for this thing to exist!

The TV series ended with all four of the women finding their happily ever after, so for there to be a movie writer/director Michael Patrick King had to work overtime to manufacture conflict (Big getting cold feet, Steve cheating on Miranda...which I still contend would NEVER happen.)

In the sequel, the main conflict comes from Carrie (Parker) overreacting to some bitchy comment a fan of hers made at a wedding, in regards to her and Big being alone with each other for the rest of their lives. Carrie flips out over the idea that she and Big are going to become a “boring old married couple” and winds up perilously close to being back in the arms of former beau Aiden (John Corbett). Maybe it’s because I’m a guy, but I found it EXTREMELY difficult to be on Carrie’s side in this conflict. I mean, basically she was annoyed that all Big wanted to do was stay at home and spend time with HER, while she wanted to go out clubbing with her friends.

Making your audience think that your protagonist is a moron isn’t usually the way to go.

The problems the rest of the gang face — Samantha vs. menopause, Charlotte struggling with motherhood and a bra-averse hot nanny, Miranda vs. a crappy box — aren’t exactly earth-shattering, but at least they’re a LOT less bratty than Carrie’s issues

Then again, the movie’s biggest problem is that Michael Patrick King really has no business writing or directing a feature film. I touched on the awful puns before, but King’s biggest problem is that he has absolutely no idea how to properly pace a movie, resulting in his second straight feature film that really shouldn't be two and a half hours long. I mean, did we really need to see the ladies walking across the desert in slow motion? Or Charlotte falling off a camel? Or watching the women perform “I Am Woman” in its entirety at a karaoke bar. Any sort of skilled editor could easily chop 45 minutes off this thing.

I was also disappointed to see the men in this flick — besides Chris Noth’s Mr. Big — get the short shrift. I get that it’s all about the ladies, but it’d be nice to get a little reminder as to why these women fell for these guys in the first place. It’s especially a shame because David Eigenberg (Steve) and Evan Handler (Harry) are extremely likable performers. Oh well, at least Raza Jeffrey (as Carrie’s personal butler) acquitted himself quite well.

Since I’ve already established that this movie really has no reason for existing, I would’ve liked to have seen more sequences that were balls-out bananas, like the wedding (or “gay wedding” as Big referred to it) between Stanford and Anthony early in the movie. The sight of Liza Minelli completely throwing herself into “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” was, for better or worse (mostly worse), one of the most mesmerizing visuals you’re going to get in any movie this year. (Or any other year.)

While I still don’t think anyone would confuse this for a good movie, I enjoyed myself because it took a couple of big swings. I also like that the story actually went for laughs this time around and reinforced the strong bond between the four main characters.

Sex and the City 2…C