They're back, they're menopausal and they've lost the little charm and humour they had. I wasn't one of the people looking forward to Sex and the City 2. After having seen it I'm questioning who those millions of fans helping the movie climb up the box office really are. Surely they must have had enough after the first film? Surely the true fans must realize that the franchise is over and all they're doing is treading on their dream with well-worn Manolo Blahniks. Sorry guys, it's over.
Watching Sex and the City 2 is like leafing through and in-flight magazine on a particularly unpleasant Ryanair flight to some shitty airport in a country you didn't really want to go to in the first place. There are some stunning pictures of exotic locations, more product placement than you could dream of and not much actual content. The realization that you're being fed ads for 150 minutes makes the whole thing feel slightly nauseating. But where do you take a story that's already been through all the narrative arcs out there? How do you continue a franchise that deals with the problems of single 30-something women when they're now 40-something, married and in some cases mothers? You can't, that's a whole different story, it could be a witty, funny and poignant one, but this ain't it.
So we get some clichéd moments where the characters moan about menopause, motherhood and married life. And there's a whole lot of recycling going on. The scriptwriting meeting might have gone something like this “lets bring back characters A, B and C just so the fans can see what happened to them, lets create a really contrived situation here with character A just to actually get some plot going... oh and what are we going to do with all that money we got from the United Arab Emirates tourism board?”.
Big is just as boring as ever. Carrie is getting more annoying and whiny. She's pretty hollow as a character now that she doesn't “carry” around all those questions that single urban women supposedly ask themselves. The rest of the girls seem like cardboard copies of their original characters. It's kind of like the Spice Girls all over again.
Sex and the City was a franchise that was supposed to be empowering for women. It made all our neurosis and pining over men seem alright, there was a sisterhood out there going through the same things. This film is a throwback to Hollywood during its more sexist days. We're supposed to laugh at scenes where Charlotte's braless nanny gets sprayed with water. (Spoiler alert).
The cute, young Irish nanny (at least they didn't make her Swedish) is at first a threat, but conveniently becomes less of a threat in the end because she's a lesbian. Huh? I can't see how this film is supposed to make women feel good about themselves. All it manages to do for me is make me feel bad that I don't have a few 100 000 spare pounds and could fly first class to bling hotels in the Middle East.