Sex and the City 2

The sequel to the touching and emotional first feature film follows our four favorite Manhattan gals two years after we saw them last.  Carrie now has two years of marriage under her belt, Samantha is still single and premenopausal, Charlotte is juggling two kids, and Miranda is still trying to find the perfect balance between work and family.  Not much has changed, really, as the situations and men in their lives may be different but the women remain the same.  This time, they decide to take a vacation to Abu Dhabi and ponder over their lives in the Middle East for a change of scenery.  While there, Samantha gets up to her usual fornicatory antics and Carrie runs into Aidan, the one that got away.  All this prompts the ladies to reassess their priorities and Carrie to realize what her marriage really means to her.  What once was a fresh, funny, and relevant portrayal of the single life of four NYC best girlfriends has now officially jumped the shark.  Carrie and Co. were more intelligent and real in their younger days whereas now they just come off as faded caricatures of themselves.  Take Samantha, for example: While it's sometimes nice how some things never change, how many times can we see Samantha having wild and crazy sex before it stops being funny?  And how many times can we see Carrie run into an ex and be tempted into slipping up?  We get that there will always be feelings there for the other guy she almost married, but the back and forth between these two men is exhausting and played out (on a sidenote, it is always nice to see the sunny and adorable John Corbett again).  It also seemed counterintuitive to me to put these women in a situation of excessive lavishness while a minute before they were all just lamenting on the poor economy and how they've all had to cut back in different areas of their lives.  It was almost as if the filmmakers couldn't decide if they wanted to pander to the masses ("See, we're hurting from the times, too!") or have us live vacariously through the foursome.  Either way, the films does not do justice to these four women who we've come to love and know so well.  If there's a SATC 3, let's hope they give the fab four something more interesting to say.


2 out of 5 stars