Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon Director: Michael Patrick King Category: IIB
Sex and the City 2 begins with a voiceover by the film's protagonist, the writer Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), reflecting on New York's history. In a fairytale style, she talks about 'an island' involving 'some Dutch, some Indians and some beads' - it's intended as an 'off-the-cuff' remark, but one that glosses over how 17th-century colonialists swindled the Native Americans into handing over the land on which the city was founded. It doesn't matter, Carrie seems to say - for it's that episode that leads to the eventual birth of the Big Apple and its accompanying glitz and glamour. It's New York BC, she says - Before Carrie.
And then let's zip towards the film's final reel, when Carrie and her gang - who are nearing the end of an all-expenses-paid sojourn in Abu Dhabi (more on that later) - are invited into a backroom in a souk, where they run into a meeting of local women covered from head to toe in black robes and matching face veils. When the New Yorkers lament on how such attire signifies gender oppression, the locals remove their abayas and niqabs to reveal flashy Western haute couture underneath. This makes the American quartet burst with joy, seeing their Arabic counterparts' emancipation manifesting itself in their canny choice of clothes.
More than just epitomising the feeble humour that runs throughout the film, these two scenes highlight how far this once mighty cultural touchstone has fallen. With edge and wit, the original television series followed the four main characters through their daily struggles to find professional, emotional and (most importantly) physical fulfilment. But underneath the banter lay an examination of female identity in corporate, commodity-driven America. Michael Patrick King's second big-screen instalment (of a planned four) has resorted to appealing to audiences through a base, parochial worldview. It's perhaps telling that the film ends with Cyndi Lauper's 1986 hit True Colours, what with the film's regression into 1980s ethos through its patriarchical gender relations, cultural and sexual stereotypes (about non-Westerners and gay people), and a shrill, starry-eyed celebration of wealth.
More devastatingly, the now well-off characters wallow in cliched and vacuous storylines: Carrie is stifled by the lack of sparkle in her two-year marriage with Mr Big (Chris Noth), the career-driven Miranda (Cynthia Nixon, above right) is torn between an unfulfilling job and her guilt over not being a good mother. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) - whose professional and childbirth travails in the television series are long gone - frets about the threat posed by her new shapely Irish nanny (whose penchant for not wearing a bra is given much attention). Surprisingly, the promiscuous Samantha (Kim Cattrall, above left behind Parker) goes through the most realistic crisis of the four - but exasperatingly, her problems in confronting menopause is dressed up more as a running joke, playing up the sexual (her comical complaints about being unable to be aroused by sexy young men) and pathological (her habit of downing 45 hormonal pills to get her oomph back) at the expense of tackling it in a more respectful manner.
And that's before their escapade to Abu Dhabi. By removing the characters from the setting that makes their lives interesting - this is a story about 'the City' after all - the film collapses as it lurches from one crass vignette to another, with visual gags of faceless, ant-like Arabic porters scrambling to follow the women travelling across the airport terminal, the dismissal of Arab names as sounding gay, and Carrie and the gang amusing themselves by watching a veiled woman eat French fries.