Thankfully, unlike the first film, "Sex and the City 2" is mostly light-hearted and silly. There are more than enough loaded puns, sexual innuendo and theatrics to shake a stiletto pump at. The problem is that it suffers from a different breed of excess: too much idiocy for idiocy's sake. Would Stanford (Willie Garson) and Antony (Mario Cantone) ever hang out at a gay bar, let alone get married? Not a chance. Would Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) seriously bump into Aiden (John Corbett) while roaming through a spice market in Abu Dhabi? Come on now. These kinds of plot lines aren't doing the film any favors. But on the improbable spectrum, I'll take them over dreary disasters like Big (Chris Noth) ditching Carrie at the altar or Steve (David Eigenberg) being unfaithful to Miranda (Cynthia Nixon).
In the sequel, Miranda and Steve are happy again (yay!) but she has to deal with a jerky boss who keeps silencing her; Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is exhausted from her kids and threatened by her sexy, bra-less nanny (Alice Eve); Samantha (Kim Cattrall) remains sexually hungry and takes all sorts of pills to halt the aging process; and Carrie and Big try and find a marital rhythm that works for them.
The high points of "Sex and the City 2" are when the fantastic four are sitting around, laughing and engaging with each other in a similar way to the series -- and there is plenty of that. The show was always at its best during these stripped-down moments. There's a great scene with Miranda and Charlotte drinking and speaking frankly about motherhood, and it never gets old watching them all get together and crack jokes about their surroundings. Just like the good old days.
The Carrie-Big stuff is more interesting this time around as they awkwardly try to figure out the whole marriage thing. (She is terrified they will become an old boring married couple, so she wants to go out constantly like a teenager; he wouldn't mind sometimes ordering in take-out and watching the flat-screen to decompress after work.) When she asks him "Am I a bitch wife who nags you?," the answer that springs to mind is "yes," but Carrie has always been an infuriating character to some extent -- her clothing choices frequently trump her life ones.
"Sex and the City 2" taps into some quality but derails it too often with shenanigans. Liza Minnelli belting out tunes and dancing at a flamboyantly gay wedding (with swans!) is painful to watch, along with seeing the girls sing "I Am Woman" in unison at a hotel karaoke bar. And there's way too much time spent in Abu Dhabi; it's like the three episodes when they went to Los Angeles and their presence in New York was sorely missed.
For the next film, which is inevitable, they should try to go back to basics and keep it simple, fun and real. But there's a better chance it will be set on the moon.
| Movie title | Sex and the City 2 |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2010 |
| MPAA Rating | R |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | The new "SATC" movie scores too high on the histrionic scale, but it brings bigger laughs than the previous go-round. |
