Friday, May 28, 2010

On the surface Sex And The City 2 is everything, everyone has already said about Sex And The City 1.  Superficially the reunion of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda is a blatant cash grab, an overlong episode of the series that chugs from plot point to plot point showcasing luxury and ostentatious outfits while catching up the eager fan on the lives of times of these, sigh, fashionable ladies.  Nothing is well acted, everything is purely for show, and with the driving force of fandom behind it, no one will care.  It is so watered down for the masses that on the outside, one would think it is merely a powder-puff of a film, glossy and borderline entertaining without ever crossing the line of offensive.  Yet, with these popular viewpoints in mind, the film becomes subversive, beyond offensive, and perhaps one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Review - Sex And The City 2

Sex And The City 2 catches up with our quartet of vacuous ninnies two years after the dramatic wedding of Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and our narrator and heroine Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker).  Marital bliss is hard coming for the socialitis-afflicted Bradshaw and she bucks against the traditional roles of man and woman.  Meanwhile Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has too many kids, Miranda (Miranda Nixon) struggles with a terrible job, and Samantha (Kim Catrall) fights menopause with vaginal cream and somehow they all end up in Abu Dhabi.  It's a scattered lot of cheap television subplots, loosely strung together in the name of a few cheap laughs.  And it is only the beginning: slick production values, characters reduced to caricatures, sub-par acting, and a script aimed at money and money alone all deflate this unnecessary sequel.

And it isn't even the shockingly poor quality of Sex And The City 2 that angers me.  In a time where there's so much unemployment and so much poverty, the movie wears its unabashed love of consumerism and extravagance on its gaudy sleeve.  At one point, Miranda tries to cheer up Charlotte about her kid-heavy lot in life.  They clink glasses to all the ladies who "can't afford help".  I nearly vomited on myself. And there is more: an overtly racist take on Arabic culture (see the scene where Samantha throws condoms at a crowd of Muslim elders) horrific stereotypes of women (even if they're smart they still need nice clothes and a rich man) and homosexuals (white swans and Liza Minnelli), and an acceptance of traditional marriage gender roles.  This film has it all, right below the well buffed surface.

Worst of all is our grinning acceptance of such a vile piece of cinema.  Millions of men and women will see this film and millions of men and women will titter and giggle there way through out.  The stereotypes the film presents will slyly sneak on by in the background continuing to weave their ways in to our collective subconscious, and we blindly laugh, our ten dollar tickets clutched in one hand.

 

Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and the KEXP blog.  He also has his own Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.   If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his writings here at Side One: Track One then please do so here.

- Noah Sanders - -



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