The stuff nightmares are made of.
Review: Now, before you wonder why I ever watched this film, I’ll confess: I didn’t watch it on principle. As a fourth wave feminist, I find the sexcapades and vapid materialism of Carrie and company to be deeply disturbing, setting back gender equality at least by a couple centuries. The fact that it’s so popular is just another example of the things that are wrong with this world. I would go as far as to say that Sex and the City is for young women what extremist Muslim clerics are for youths in the Middle East: (hopefully) the vast majority will dismiss them as crazies, but there will be a significant number of confused young people who think that it’s actually a viable lifestyle to strut around in Manolo Blahniks or blow up a school because you think that a book that you’ve never read says it’s a good idea. You think I’m being too harsh on shallow, materialistic, and utterly fabulous women? Just you wait ten years and let’s see which forces bring down civilization.
But I digress. I wasn’t planning on comparing Carrie Bradshaw to Osama bin Laden. Actually, I don’t think anyone has ever done that before. Something about political correctness or something. Which is ironic, considering that from what I’ve seen in the trailers, this film strives to make the two worlds of fashionistas and angry, insulted Muslims collide. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that it will end in millions of dollars of profit. Bleh.
Since I didn’t actually see the film nor ever intend to, I will just take some quotes from other reviewers who were forced to watch this movie because they get paid (far too little) to do so. As you will see, the movie inspires a new level of creativity in the way critics trash movies.
“It’s an almost avant-garde adventure in aimlessness.” – The Wall Street Journal
“An enervated, crass and gruesomely caricatured trip to nowhere [that] seems conceived primarily to find new and more cynical ways to abuse the loyalty of its audience.” – Washington Post
“Like one of those Cosmopolitan cocktails, it’s guaranteed to leave women everywhere with a warm, fuzzy glow. For men, it’s like all your hangovers came along at once.” – The Daily Mirror
“A 2½ hour test of patience featuring four embarrassingly-entitled Ugly Americans agonizing over trivia and assorted soap opera drama that is, quite frankly, so patently superficial, you almost wish they’d be cursed with some real problem.” – NewsBlaze
“To the list of insults, real and imaginary, committed by the Great Satan against the Arab world, add ‘Sex and the City 2,’ in which Carrie Bradshaw and friends bring their name-brand materialism, exhibitionist licentiousness and Western bunk to Abu Dhabi.” – Commercial Appeal
“It has no plot to speak of, little in the way of wit or intelligence, and is about 50% longer than can reasonably be justified.” – ReelViews
“Future Bolsheviks will use Sex and the City 2 as a recruiting film.” – Northwest Herald
“Early in Sex and the City 2, I started a list of things that could easily be cut because they go nowhere. It’s a long list.” – St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Thank Jimmy Choo for feminism! Am I right, ladies? I mean, not the nasty hairy feminism that’s all about equal pay and publicly subsidized day care and all that nonsense…” – Flick Filosopher
“The most insulting and dangerous film for women since Pretty Woman. But with less charm.” – Little White Lies
“It’s supposed to be Sex and the City. This is Sects and the Souk.” – Newark Star Ledger
“Earth hath not anything to show more fatuous than this sequel to an already otiose movie of the hit television series.” – Financial Times
“The stakes are so low that, during the girls’ final madcap sprint through an outdoor market disguised in burqas, the unspeakable outcome they’re trying to forestall is the possibility of having to fly home in coach.” – Slate
“Thanks to writer-director Michael Patrick King, I now have a fair idea how it might feel to be stoned to death with scented candles.” – Chicago Reader
“With writer/director Michael Patrick King and the whole gang back, ‘Sex and the City 2’ is as dry as the country they leave the city for.” – BlackFilm.com
“On behalf of all sane and sensitive Americans, let me be one of the first to apologize to the Middle East and the Arab world for Sex and the City 2.” – Deseret News
“Sex and the City 2 delivers clunky jokes, unengaging plot twists and characterizations and, worst of all, it’s ugly to look at.” – HitFix
“I lost count of the number of times the filmmakers dropped the word “sparkle” into the script; no doubt they thought they were going for gold, but they’ve created a load of Ratners.” – Daily Telegraph
“Carrie is presented as some kind of empowering female image. That’s scary because she’s really more of an old school stereotype as she chases romantic clichés while pretending to write her own rules.” – KPBS.org
“The tagline states that we should ‘Carrie on.’ The publicity dept. almost got it right, but the spelling’s off. It needs to be ‘Carrion’ because nothing says putrefying, rotten and vile quite like this sequel.” – Indie Movies Online
“It’s worse than Sex and the City 1, and that alone is a remarkable achievement.” – Globe and Mail
“A miscalculation of feminine power so extreme that our country’s threat level should immediately be raised.” – eFilmCritic.com
“Like a plastic surgeon, storyteller King keeps trying to find new ways to lift and tighten his characters, but they have become garish caricatures of themselves.” – Dallas Morning News
“Vapid, overlong, painfully unfunny, preposterous and, worst of all, boring. It’s so bad that it’s gone past good and back to bad again.” – NYC Movie Guru
“The franchise will eventually, like all things, come to an end … Sex and the City 2 is one step closer to that inevitability, so there is hope in it.” – Mark Reviews Movies
“When Marie Antoinette did this, the people tore down the f’ing Bastille. When our “Sex and the City” girls do it, they slurp it up like box rosé and Häagen-Dazs.” – Film Freak Central
“The ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense.” – New York Times
“This is a sequel that doesn’t come close to justifying its existence.” – Seattle Times
“If cartoons of Mohammed have incited Jihad, “Sex and the City 2″ may add nukes to the equation.” – Reeling Reviews
“When Carrie asks Big, “Am I just a bitch wife who nags you?” I could hear all the straight men in the theater — all four of us — being physically prevented from responding.” – Salon.com
“Two camels substitute for Fonzie’s shark in this franchise-ending sequel” – About.com
“Suggesting some kind of quasi-feminist Manhattan-boosterism has always made the Sex and the City series phony, as well as loathsome.” – New York Press
“Sarah Jessica Parker is now 45 years old, and, frankly, I cannot stomach another moment of the simpering, mincing, hair-tossing, eyelash-batting little-girl shtick she’s been pulling ever since she emerged…” – Village Voice
“The film might have triumphed as a musical: camp, virtually plotless, and liberally sequined. But sadly this sequel is not Sex and the City — it is Menopause in the Desert, and a waste of four great characters.” – Times
“Though the sequel is a welcome return of the four women we know and love, it’s tough not to acknowledge that if we were all friends in real life, at this point we’d probably stop taking their calls.” – New York Daily News
“Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of Sex and the City 2 are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row.” – Roger Ebert
“Women, this isn’t empowerment; it’s like watching Us Weekly prank call the New York Times.” – Metromix.com
“As tasteless as an Arabian cathouse, as worn-out as your 1998 flip-flops and as hideous as the mom jeans Carrie wears with a belly-baring gingham top, Sex and the City 2 is two of the worst movies of the year.” – New York Post
“Here’s another measure of how drastically the recession has affected American culture: Sex and the City isn’t fun anymore.” – St. Petersburg Times
“Honestly, by the time they ride camels, it’s Ishtar in designer gowns.” – Arizona Republic
“One wrongheaded jaw-dropper follows another, from Samantha’s description of a gay manservant as “Paula Abdul” to a comic climax in which the ladies escape an angry male mob by wearing hijabs and abayas given to them by like-minded Muslim women.” – Time Out New York
“The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally, if you get my drift.” – New York Observer
“An atrocious motion picture…makes The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert look like The Remains of the Day.” – Brian Orndorf.com
“It’s not often a horror film reaches into the depths of my soul, grabs my heart and shatters it into a billion terrified pieces.” – OK! Magazine
“A bloated, wearyingly unsubtle, dramatically inert valentine to conspicuous consumption. The movie’s overly demonstrative acting style — embodied in varying degrees by all four leads — seems pitched at small children.” – Screen International
“The most depressing thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it seems to justify every nasty thing said and written about the series and first feature film.” – New York Magazine
Being Arbitrary 