Item: Sex and the City 2
Rating: 3
Author: Cindy White

So you want to know how bad Sex and the City 2 is? Let's just say, the first 15 minutes are devoted to a lavish gay wedding, and that's the most interesting part of the entire movie. Whereas the four main characters were once – back when it was just a television series and not a summer movie event – relatable, recognizable and symbolic of the sexual liberation of women, the film franchise has reduced them to shallow, self-absorbed caricatures with only a passing resemblance to fully realized, three-dimensional human beings.

Even the title is a misnomer here. You may not know anything (or care to know) about Sex in the City, but if you've been paying attention to the promotional material, you probably have an idea that a good chunk of this sequel takes place in the Middle East, not New York City, which has always been as much a part of the show as Manolo Blahniks and Cosmopolitans. The producers have even stated explicitly that the city is the fifth main character in Sex and the City. Perhaps Manhattan asked for too much money, forcing the studio to recast it for the sequel. And as for the "Sex" part, with three of the four women married and far away from their spouses, the only one who actually gets any in the movie is Samantha, and that only happens twice in two and a half hours.

The aforementioned wedding sequence is part of the overly long New York preamble, which sets up the conflicts that will unfold later on when the action moves to the Middle East. The other function of this section of the film, it seems, is to establish the theme of decadence that we'll be bombarded with for the duration. Even the opening credits have been glitzed-out, bedazzled to the extreme. This level of extravagance doesn't feel quite as tone deaf as it did in the first film (which came out when the economic picture looked much worse), but it still has the feel of looking back longingly at the gilded past rather than facing up to the realities of the present.

We pick up with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) two years after the events of the previous film. Not that you need to have seen it to be able to figure out where they are now in their lives. Carrie and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) are still figuring out married life, Charlotte is concerned about her hot Irish nanny's aversion to wearing a bra, Miranda has a new boss who doesn't respect her and Samantha is battling menopause with help from Suzanne Somers. All four of them are wealthy and have everything they ever dreamed of, yet none of them are particularly happy with their fabulous New York lives.

- Warner Bros.
Click for more images from Sex and the City 2.

Fortunately, they are offered the opportunity to get away from it all when Samantha makes an impression on a filthy rich sheik from the United Arab Emirates. He wants her to create a public relations campaign for his luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi, and invites her and her friends on a week-long, all-expenses-paid trip to check it out. The glam factor is pushed even further at this point, as the women travel ultra first class on the sheik's airline and arrive to find they each have their own individual luxury cars and butlers for the duration of their stay in the hotel's lavish, multi-room $22,000-a-night jewel suite.

And yet still, they find things to worry about. Carrie has left home with her marriage in a delicate state, fearing that she and Big are getting a little too close to "old married couple" territory and worrying about his proposed solution to take a few days off a week from each other. Really. This is her biggest problem. She has an exquisitely furnished Manhattan apartment, a massive closet filled with designer fashions, a new book on the way, three devoted best friends and the man she's been in love with for years. But all he wants to do is stay home and watch black and white movies with her. Life sucks!

Things get even more complicated when Carrie runs into her ex-boyfriend Aidan (John Corbett), who suggests they meet for dinner to catch up. After all, it's not every day you run into your ex in a marketplace in Abu Dhabi. Depressed by a scathing book review, she decides to accept his invitation, though she knows she's "playing with fire," as Charlotte points out. Drama ensues, predictably. And Carrie loses the last few shreds of integrity she had remaining.

The rest of the characters have personal issues to work through, but it's difficult to feel much sympathy for any of them, especially when put in the context of the oppressive society of Abu Dhabi, a country where women can be arrested for kissing in public and are expected to wear black abayas and cover their faces in public at all times (even when eating). Of course, as Samantha notes, it does eliminate the need for Botox. So there's that. The film's idea of feminist solidarity? A group karaoke rendition of "I am Woman." Hear them roar, fundamentalists.

This stark contrast of values is embodied most notably by Samantha, who, without her menopause treatments, gradually morphs into a screeching, hormone-riddled stereotype with no regard to discretion or the consequences of her actions. Once confronted with the harsh realities of this conservative society, Carrie and her pals are forced to get the heck out of dodge (in a hurry, because otherwise they'll have to travel – gasp! – coach). Unfortunately, it's not an option available to the group of sympathetic women who save them from an angry mob in the marketplace. There's some lip service paid to the fact that sexual discrimination has not exactly been eradicated in America, but there's not enough time between camel caravans in the desert, cheap sex innuendos and the fetishising of tanned, muscular soccer players by the pool to properly explore this theme.

In the end, the main lesson the characters take away from their experience is that fashion is universal. And the lesson the audience takes is that one Sex in the City movie was more than enough.