Tara Reviews... Sex and the City 2

Warning: this may contain spoilers. Or destroy your dreams if you loved Sex and the City. But, whatever.

I am unashamedly one of those Sex and the City girls. Yes, I have a name necklace. Yes, I have had the "OMG you're such a Miranda LOLZ!!!" conversations. Yes, I have spent heartbroken weekends watching the DVD box set with a tub of icecream. I don't think the first movie was particularly good - unless you mean "good" in a total, guilty-pleasure, self-indulgent type of way - but I really enjoyed it. I was a bit skeptical that they were even MAKING a second movie, because that seemed to be flogging the proverbial dead horse (resist urge to make Sarah Jessica Parker joke). But, my girlfriends and I went along in its opening week to see the glorious train wreck.

I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how much I loathed this movie.

The (rather flimsy) plotline is as such: Carrie and Big are having marital problems because he, as a 50-something year old man, would rather eat in and watch movies on the couch, as opposed to going out for dinner and a movie premiere every single night. Miranda is having problems at work. Charlotte isn't coping with having two kids. Samantha isn't coping with flaunting her almost-menopausal vagina every chance she gets. Samantha gets offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Abu Dhabi, so she can look at doing some PR for the hotel. And so it begins.

I realise that this plot is probably about as meaty as the first movie (boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. And someone shits their pants), but at least the first movie was not INCREDIBLY CULTURALLY OFFENSIVE. I just felt like the whole time the girls were in Abu Dhabi (which was pretty much the entire movie) there was a whole IM IN UR CULTURE RAPING YOUR BELIEFS LOLOLOLOL thing going on. Samantha refused to cover up (saying "But we're at the pool!" or "But we're at the hotel!" For FUCK'S, Samantha. Don't be such a douche. Cover it up). And their conversations about the culture seemed to be like "Poor Muslim girls. They must be so oppressed because I don't see ANY of them running off to have sex in public. I'm SO glad I live in America where we can do that kind of thing." It kind of felt like the writers wanted to explore some empowerment themes but then realised "SHIT! We're getting in too deep, people are just coming to see them wear pretty clothes. Let's write more scenes involving their man-servants instead."


Another thing that annoyed me was the fashion. The first movie, I died. The closet? Unf. But, because this movie was set in a Middle Eastern country, Pat Fields must have felt it appropriate to dress them all as extras from a Bollywood movie. People who go to France don't go around wearing Breton shirts and a beret. People who come to Australia don't wear Akubra hats and R.M Williams boots. For me, while some of the costumes on the show and I guess in the first movie were a little ridiculous, they were still wearable (if only in New York). This just felt way to costumey and I can't really see Perth girls walking around in ridiculous headgear and balloon pants in six month's time.

After this (INCREDIBLY LONG) movie ended I felt like I had been punched in the vagina. I felt like I wanted to rip out my own uterus and throw it at all the woo girls who seemed to be in the cinema. Ugh.

My rating: 1/2 / ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ . I can't even. DO NOT see it if you want to hold on to your brain cells/dignity.

Sorry to shatter your dreams. It hurt me too!

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