“Who would dare hate you?” Carrie says to Miranda, shocked at the oh-so-mean and nasty way her boss treats her, having the gall to text her whilst she’s at a ‘Gay Wedding’ (the film insists you realise that it’s a Gay Wedding). To answer Carrie’s question, quite a lot of people have the audacity to hate Miranda if you go by the reviews of this film. And before you ask, yes, I hate her too. As a matter of fact, I’ve struggled hard to find a character in this film that wasn’t either completely unmemorable or totally vile and horrid.
The main one, Carrie, is apparently some kind of author and she writes books about something to do with dating or whatever and that gets her recognised at that Gay Wedding she was at (did I mention that it’s a Gay Wedding?). The others are Miranda, who is a walking contradiction in that she is apparently smart enough to be a lawyer in the Big Apple, yet stupid enough to be genuinely shocked that a partner in a New York City law firm has an acerbic personality. Samantha is an insufferable slut who really should learn to grow up (I struggle to believe men find her attractive). And Charlotte has kids and never seems to stop feeling sorry for herself.
So Carrie’s pissed off that her husband, Mr. Big (no, really) likes to watch TV. She also provides the narrative voice-over for the film, most of which is basically her boasting about how much money she has like a rich, spoiled brat that insists on name-dropping its pony every other sentence. “After Big and I sold the extravagant rooftop penthouse we thought we were meant to live in, we decided that maybe we’d need to come a little more down to earth. So we did — twelve floors to be exact!” Hilarious. Who hasn’t been in that situation?
Miranda eventually decides to quit her job, presumably because the firm she’s at doesn’t roll out a diamond-encrusted red carpet made by Louis Vuitton every time she walks into the room. Charlotte has the common problem we all face of having her priceless vintage skirt made dirty. Carrie’s husband is unbearable for her because, on top of being enough of a provider to keep her in a situation where she can write trite, shitty books (although she never seems to do any work), he also cooks her dinner and buys her a TV. What woman would put up with that?
The first hour of the film basically consists of spoiled rich women moaning constantly. Then Samantha gets hit on by some rich, Middle Eastern film producer (I still don’t believe anyone finds her attractive) and she decides that her friends are oh-so-hard-done-by and need to get away. Her friends agree: “We need to go somewhere RICH” and so they jet off to Abu Dhabi for a cornucopia of sun, sand and cultural imperialism.
The rest of the film is roughly 90 minutes of these so-called characters being snotty about Arabs whilst being waited on hand and foot and wearing stupid clothes. This amount of copious wealth being showered on such unsympathetic characters in such a tumultuous economic climate has got to be one of the biggest cinematic dick moves in recent years. To add insult to insult, the film’s producers are seemingly not content with only pissing off Westerners as their understanding of Islamic culture is wilfully ignorant, essentially limited to the names of the clothes the women wear. This is why the terrorists hate us.
There is also an attempt to give the film some feminist credentials, but like everything else this falls flat on its face, reaching its nadir in a genuinely painful scene where the four main characters sing karaoke to ‘I Am A Woman’, as if annoying foreigners by singing a shit song really badly is what Girl Power is all about. The main problem with the film’s ‘feminist message’ is that it’s so transparently written by men who have no understanding of the subject they lamely attempt to tackle. Its grasp of women’s liberation is basically limited to repeating the phrase ‘strong women’ like it’s going out of fashion every few scenes.
Aside from the insensitivity, most of Sex and the City 2 consists of ambassadors of inane bullshit sitting in expensive places whilst cracking dick jokes. So if you like looking at shiny things and have no sense of humour then this film is probably for you. For everyone else, on the other hand, it’s probably best avoided.
Sex and the City 2 will be showing at LU Cinema on Thursday and Friday, Week Three (October 28 & 29) at 7:30pm.
