“Sex and the City 2”
Reviewed 27 May 2010 by Ted Faraone
1 ½ stars out of five; $3 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.50.
A TWO & ONE-HALF HOUR COMMERCIAL FOR
It was a hit television show, then a hit movie, and it put at least three actresses whose careers had not been exactly jet propelled on the map. It made series creator Darren Starr the man he is today. But at some point someone has to stand before progress like the late William Buckley and cry, “Stop!”
That’s not to say that “Sex and the City 2” does not have some decent gags, although most are telegraphed. But gags alone do not make a movie, unless one is a Marxist of the Groucho sort. The latest installment in the Carrie Bradshaw saga also violates Woody Allen’s rule that a comedy should not run more than 100 minutes. It runs 146. A cold machete in the editing room could easily have eliminated half an hour without losing anything but audience bathroom breaks.
Which is not to say that pic will not get significant B.O. All the women to whom your critic has spoken say that they will watch it as a fashion show. But plots, dramatic tension, even comic tension, in this sequel to the sequel, are contrived.
Pic opens with a gay wedding. Just in case we don’t know it’s a gay wedding, we are told so about ten times. There is even an all-male chorus singing Broadway show tunes. Kudos to Mario Cantone as the guy half of the gay couple. He steals his every scene.
But one tired gay joke after another is just too much… and then, when one of the four horsewomen of the apocalypse (Kim Cattrall as uber publicist Samantha Jones, now 52 and menopausal) utters the line, “Could this get any more gay?” Who should appear on stage but Liza Minnelli in a cameo running on all eight cylinders? Inside jokes abound. And it is a joy to see Liza back at the top of her game. Then more dialogue explains why Liza shows up when gay karma is at the extreme end of the scale. Thus it is with most of the jokes in this sorry excuse for a sequel. Auds are smarter than filmmakers give them credit for being. Cut the explanations. Minnelli’s is not pic’s only cameo. Tim Gunn of “Project Runway” and Miley Cyrus (caught wearing the same dress as Samantha to a movie premiere at the Ziegfeld) each get their own. Oddly, Penelope Cruz is cast in a micro role as a Spanish bank VP who catches the eye of Big (Chris Noth).
Plot, if one can call it that, centers on the discontents of marriage after a few years. It seems that Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big have settled into a bit of a routine that she’d love to shake up. The 40 and 50 somethings have a bit of sorting out to do. Kids, lack of kids, work problems, nanny problems…. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has a good looking, large breasted, brassiere-less nanny (Alice Eve) who gets the attention of every guy who sees her, but she turns out to be gay, an orientation issue which solves so many of the contrived problems in pic’s plot. Melinda (Cynthia Nixon) works for a law firm where the managing partner disparages her before colleagues.
Carrie just wants the “sparkle” back in her life with Big. There is a plot dead end in which they agree to take two days off each week from each other -- using Carrie’s old (pre-marriage) apartment as a hideout. Once the dissatisfactions of married life are established, there enters a dues ex machina in the form of rich Sheik Khalid (Art Malik) from Abu Dhabi who has bankrolled a movie starring Jerry ‘Smith’ Jerrod (Jason Lewis), an ex client and ex lover of Samantha. The Sheik invites her to
This is where the “Sex and the City” franchise jumps the shark. About an hour is wasted languishing as only a bunch of high-end tourists can do in the desert. One luxury after another does not exactly endear a film to audiences wondering whether they’ll have a job next week. A nightclub scene in which the four bring down the house in a karaoke version of “I Am Woman,” is too bogus for words.
If ever a comedy needed comic relief it is this. And Cattrall provides it in spades. It is also a good deal more vulgar than her work on the eponymous TV series. Scenes of her getting banged by totally naked studs don’t need to be filmed. They need only be suggested. Or at least shot from the waist up.
Enter Aidan (John Corbett) the onetime love of Carrie. They meet in the bazaar and have dinner and after telling each other how much they love their respective spouses, they share a passionate kiss -- for which Carrie immediately goes into paroxysms of useless guilt. Said guilt and the mess she makes with Big over the silly smooch is about the only tension pic develops, and it is resolved in the “Father Knows Best” fashion.
Leave it to Cattrall’s Samantha to turn pic into farce. She gets the fearless foursome kicked out of paradise by behaving too brazenly in public with a hot Danish architect, much to the annoyance of the locals, for which she is arrested. The Sheik cuts off their credit as his hotel guests, and they’re on their own to get out of town -- or pay $22k per night for the suite. At this point, pic goes over the top in political correctness of a sort with Samantha making the rudest sexual gestures to a crowd of conservative Moslem men outraged at her attire and the contents of her purse. The four then take refuge in a ladies’ book club, where the members wear the latest fashions under their black robes and discuss Suzanne Somers as an author. Pic’s ending is predictable. Lucille Ball did much the same thing far better over 50 years ago.
Tech credits are erratic. Lensing excels, but sound recording leaves a few key lines inaudible. That ordinarily would be a major problem, but pic’s every key line is repeated at least once. Costumes are over the top, both for women and gay men. Set design is intended to dazzle, and it sometimes succeeds. The screenplay (Michael Patrick King), direction (King again), and editing (Michael Berenbaum) are all sub-par. “Sex and the City 2” is what a bad TV network would have fielded as a two-hour special program to end a sitcom. Pic instead could just end the franchise.
“Sex and the City 2” is rated “R” for sexual situations, nudity, and language. Don’t take the kids. It could bore them to death.
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