Sex and the City worked because it combined, Carrie Bradshaw's angst's and insights, with the milestones and merits of living in New York City. Although we knew things were over the top, we enjoyed living vicariously through Carrie and her bosom buddies, as they navigated the often gritty issues of career women post 30's.
We forgave them for their excesses, because the wisdom they shared as they dealt with the oh-too-real issues of life, helped us understand ourselves more. They were provocative and honest. Their frank confrontation of sexuality, homosexuality, infertility, and marriage versus career, helped us work out what we wanted. Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha, and Carrie said things that we had always thought and never dared to express. As they did so, they revealed and liberated our inner voice.
Something has gone terribly wrong. Sex and the City 2 has none of these riveting qualities that originally shook the culture and created such a loyal mass audience.
Where to start to delineate the myriad reasons why this movie fails. Because it does fail, on every level. It is not funny, it is not clever, the fashion is rococo, the characters are superficial and shallow, and most scenes feel staged and artificial. Although Sex and the City 2 still attempts to tackle real-world questions, they would have done well to avoid doing so, considering their treatment of sensitive material descends into nothing more than parodies and stereotypical characterizations of the gay culture, and the Middle East. Worse still they have become parodies of their own originality.
The first SATC movie satisfied because our girls grew up, made and lived through, hard choices and we matured alongside them. However, Sex and the City 2 shows us a regressive shadow side, the part we though we had outgrown, and it's embarrassing.
Ella Quent May 2010
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