Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 146 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011
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The main image that came to mind for reviewing Sex and the City 2 was that seeing it was like eating a couple of large slices of sponge cake, over-filled with cream and laden with lots of icing – maybe a treat at the start but, full of sugar, and ultimately not healthy for you. The moral unhealthiness for many could be gross envy of these four women from New York City who have no real experience of real life and have the money or the connections for them to be able to avoid it and stay fashionably dressed (with multi changes) while doing it.
But, for those who followed the lives of Carrie and her friends Miranda, Charlotte and the provocative Samantha, on TV over the years and enjoyed the first movie, no warning about how dangerous sponge cake can be for your blood sugar levels, is going to stop them rushing to see this sequel.
The four women, despite two of them having children, live an American dream, a designer lifestyle of capitalist consumerism. The first part of this film is also a fairy tale, a half an hour at a gay wedding, with such an overdose of camp in colour, clothes and music (a male choir singing songs from shows), arguments about being PC in talking about this topic, Sarah Jessica Parker arriving in tails to be ‘best man’ and then (yes, that can be capped, the officiating person turning up in the form of Liza Minnelli who, of course, does a song and dance routine that could become part of the drag queen repertoire).
Where to go after that? To some problems, Miranda being pushed around professionally and silenced by a chauvinistic boss; Charlotte concerned about the busty young Irish nanny looking after her girls; Carrie and Big sorting out marriage issues; and Samantha, just the same, mouthing all the vulgar lines with relish, concerned about sex and menopause.
Fortunately, for them, they have time out with a trip, all expenses paid, to Abu Dabi (filmed in Morocco) where they get to be insensitive American tourists, especially concerning dress and sex issues, although some burkha-clad Arab women show that they are just as Fifth Avenue conscious underneath the black (which means that the film is going to flop in Saudi Arabia, Iran etc, though thrive on women there pirating and downloading copies). Our heroines also do a karaoke Abu Dabi version of I Am Woman. (The rooms, meals, drinks, limousines and so on that they are treated to could probably save the borrowing debts of an impoverished country, say, Spain or Greece!)
Real life almost impinges but they get home, first class flight, and live happily ever after until the next sequel.
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