Sex and the City 2 (2010)

I’ve already started to hear whispers of disappointment about Sex and the City 2, the second big-screen helping of everyone’s favorite oversexed, over-shopped Manhattan gals. Honestly, I’m having some trouble understanding the backlash.

Granted, the plot of the film is paper-thin. In a nutshell, the ladies–Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha–are all back with their men, and their issues with men, in tow. This time around, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is stressing out about her sexist boss from hell. Charlotte (Kristen Davis) is overwhelmed by the pressure to be the perfect mother and is worried that her hubby, Harry (Evan Handler), might be diddling their braless nanny (Alice Eve). Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is happily diddling anything that moves in the hopes of keeping menopause at bay. And Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is obsessing about and over-analyzing every detail of her relationship with her now-husband, John, a.k.a. Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Throw in a big gay wedding–for Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone)–a no-expense-spared sojourn in an exotic land, a few racy one-liners, and the stage is set.

Is any of this ringing a bell? Barring the marriage contracts and offspring, it’s essentially the same platter that writer-director Michael Patrick King served up to eager women on HBO every Sunday night (8, 9 Central) for six years. In fact, with its 2 hour and 26 minute runtime, the film actually breaks down into a neat, if uneven, five-episode story arc.

Episode 1 is the frothy fun one with the over-the-top wedding, complete with a fantastically campy guest appearance by Liza Minelli performing “Single Ladies.” Episode 3 is the too-long infomercial for a fictitious hotel in Abu Dhabi, where the girls party–and shop–like it’s 1999 (you know, before the economy sucked big time, but after American women collectively fell in love with Manolo, Hermes, and Dior). That’s the episode designed for King to squeeze in as many gratuitous Maybach and Emirates Air product placements as he can and the one you’d quickly delete from your Tivo.

The in-between episodes of Sex and the City 2 ask the more substantive question: does marriage have to be as dull as take-out dinners and The Deadliest Catch on the couch every night? It’s in these scenes where Parker stops delivering one-line groaners about “inter-friend-tions” and “a mid-wife crisis” and actually shows the vulnerable, messy side of Carrie that women saw themselves in between the years of 1998 and 2004. Noth, too, has a couple of real moments, particularly when Carrie delivers the news about a fateful meeting with her ex-boyfriend, Aidan (John Corbett), over the telephone.

But how much substance can you possibly expect from a gang of ladies whose modus operandi has been the mélange of relationship neurosis and conspicuous consumption since the day we met them? Of course, the men in the cast do little more than look patiently on in their tuxedos, or else pump their bare butt cheeks between Samantha’s thighs. Since when did men ever do anything else on Sex and the City? And, of course, the ladies always get way more than they deserve in these guys, about whom they complain, but who really aren’t all that bad. Wasn’t that always part of the show’s aspirational promise? That, no matter how truly nuts you were, there’s someone for everyone. That, and cheap Prada handbags.

The only time the film veers wildly off the mark is when King attempts to make political statements about sexual mores and gender roles in the Middle East. His take on the subject is simplistic, overly reductive, and downright disrespectful. If it’s true that you should write only what you know, I would suggest that Mr. King stick to gay weddings and Manhattan fashionistas.

Otherwise, Sex and the City 2 is as this franchise has always been. And I have to wonder as I watch the complaints about the film fill up my Facebook newsfeed if that standard breakup line applies here. It’s not them; it’s us who have changed. Somewhere between the economy’s collapse and the Real Housewives of New York City, perhaps we simply outgrew them.

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