Sex and the City 2? More Like Boners in Abu Dhabi

With all the complaints I thought I’d have after seeing Sex and the City 2, I didn’t think the excessive amount of boner shots would be one of them. Because one is led to believe this is a movie about adult women, not awkward teenage boys trying to avoid going up to the blackboard in math class. Needless to say I was wrong. And boners are just the beginning of the objections I had to this movie.

SATC2 (yeah, I’m using the shorthand) picks up two years after the first one at the big gay wedding of Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone): two gay men who’ve hated each other for the past ten plus years. What changed is never explained. The wedding is ostentatious and well, gay (complete with Liza Minnelli singing Single Ladies, need I say more?). There’s your first twenty minutes. Still deciding if you want to go Keep reading. I promise, I’ll talk you out of it.

Our fabulous foursome has run into a whole new set of non-problems. Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) gets fired because “men are intimidated by strong women” (don’t even get me started on how many things are wrong with this statement in regards to these characters). Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) is having trouble raising her two daughters despite her live-in nanny (Alice Eve). Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) are still together, but want to spend their time doing different things causing strife in their marriage. And of course Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) hasn’t grown in the slightest, except that she’s doing everything she can to stop menopause and keep her ridiculously unrealistic sex drive in tact. What a perfect time for the girls to leave their complicated lives behind and spend an all-expense paid week in Abu-Dhabi!

Despite being almost two and a half hours long, writer, director, producer Michael Patrick King (who’s made a career making unlikeable woman seem likeable to a large percent of the female population) failed to include one of the most important elements of screenwriting in his masterpiece: conflict. When things go wrong, the fastest, easiest solution always works, yet it is still a giant crisis situation. The girls only have an hour to pack before checkout! Carrie loses her passport and it’s right where she left it two days before! They might have to fly coach! How will these four independent, street savvy, New York women ever survive this?

At least the characters were consistent. Miranda is annoyingly type A, but remains the most tolerable of the four. Charlotte has a constant look of surprise on her face that can only mean bad Botox or bad acting. Samantha’s inappropriate sexual behavior is slightly heightened as it is illegal in Abu Dhabi, but as an audience member, I was actually relieved to hear someone tell her to keep it in her pants. And in true Carrie fashion, Ms. Bradshaw never fails to make everyone’s problems less important than her own. As her best friend is taken into custody in a foreign country, Carrie cannot help but worry about her meaningless kiss with Aidan. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert.

The one redeeming scene in the movie is when Miranda and Charlotte have a frank discussion about motherhood over drinks. Why was it redeeming? Because it was real. This is a conversation that actual women in their mid-forties might have. Hell, if this had been the movie, I might have liked it. Or at least somewhat tolerated it.

As a television show, Sex and the City was popular because it showed the world that single women live in. Yes, their lives were more glamorous than the rest of us, but at least we could relate to their situations (and by we, I mean the females and gay men that skyrocketed the rating of this show). Personally, I’d love to know what it is like to have an all expense paid vacation to Abu Dhabi where every one of my minuscule crises is solved in less than five minutes with the easiest possible solution.

Lastly, you can’t talk about Sex and the City without talking about the clothes. So let’s talk about it. The women have a costume change literally every scene. But that wasn’t enough for Michael Patrick King. The man must have a real boner for labels. The audience member cannot help but feel that even the girls’ most conservative outfits were not appropriate for the middle east, until it is revealed that actually all Arabic women wear Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior and Prada, UNDER THEIR BURKAHS! No, I’m not making this up. I don’t have to! If Michael Bay were gay, this is the movie he would have made. Instead of explosions, there was an explosion of labels.

I still have so much to say and no clear way to sum this review up so I will end with a list of ten more reasons why you shouldn’t see this movie:

10. Samantha’s personal Muslim gay butler named Abdul whom we refer to as Paula.
9. Charlotte’s gratuitously braless nanny.
8. The fact that Samantha looks like she’s about to give a blow job 78% of the time.
7. There’s a character named Dick Spurt. Actually that was pretty funny.
6. The promotion of Suzanne Somers’ book.
5. The bastardization of It Happened One Night. Frank Capra is rolling around in his grave right now.
4. The blatant promotion of Abu Dhabi complete with Miranda’s tour guide tone giving us a brief lesson is Arabic and culture.
3. We only got to look at Smith Jerrod’s body (Aaron Lewis) for about five seconds. On a similar note, Mr. Big has clearly let his body go.
2. Samantha’s condom throwing, dry humping, temper tantrum in the middle of an Abu Dhabi market leading us to ask “Is this three year old really going through menopause?”
1. Big’s reaction to Carrie kissing her ex-boyfriend. Trust me, it will make you say “Seriously? No man would ever react like that. EVER!!!”

Who would have thought boner shots would have been the least of my criticisms?