Sex And The City 2 Has Neither Sex Nor The City
For any newsblogger scoping for sex-related stories, Sex And The City is a big pain in the ass. Because major newspapers that run real stories about real things are constantly putting 'Sex' in their headlines. The newsblogger inevitably gets excited, before the crushing realization--again--that the article's just a fluff piece about how, for instance, one day Miley Cyrus showed up on the set of Sex and the City 2. A movie which, thank God, is finally out and which, judging from reviews, will disappear faster than you can say "stereotypes about Muslim women."
For the second film based on the popular pre-millennial TV series, the four ladies abandon New York for Dubai, where the economy is better and where they can shop in more luxurious outlets of stores that New York already has anyway. According to reviews, the girls ride around on camels and seriously say things like "Bedouin, bath and beyond!" and "Abu Dhabi doo!" For two and a half hours.
Kurt Loder, in his review at MTV.com, points out some of the film's conceptual flaws:
After opening with the usual helicopter footage of New York skyscrapers (Look, there's the Chrysler Building!), this very long picture decamps for what seems like half an hour to a gay wedding in Connecticut, complete with glittery male choir and a Liza Minnelli (!) dance number, which nearly sinks the film on its own. It then decamps even farther to Abu Dhabi, of all places, where there's no sex and, for the story's purposes, no city either. This is where most of the movie takes place.
From www.mtv.com via clp.ly
Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwartzbaum notes that Americans, who as a whole are a lot poorer now than they were when the series debuted in 1998, may not care about these people anymore:
The experience of listening to the girls complain about their fairy-tale lives from the comfort of an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation in the Arabian desert may leave a viewer feeling by turns nostalgic, disoriented, and impatient.
From www.ew.com via clp.ly
Cleavage enthusiast Roger Ebert takes issue with the women's sanity, especially in the wardrobe department:
Any mother who wears her vintage Valentino while making muffin topping with her kids should be hauled up before the Department of Children and Family Services.
From rogerebert.suntimes.com via clp.ly
And so on.
At one point, and most reviews point this out, one character actually uses the expression "Lawrence of my labia!"
Abu Dhabi wouldn't allow permits for the film's production in Dubai, so it was filmed in Morocco instead. There are no plans to show the film in Abu Dhabi, either, since the first Sex and the City film wasn't shown there.
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