Over-the-Topulent, Stale Script Tarnish Sex and the City 2: Movie Review

When I told my mother I was going to see Sex and the City 2 yesterday, she warned against it. "It got terrible reviews," she said. At 52, I should know better-mothers are always right. Instead I told her smugly the reviews didn't matter, fans of the old Sex and the City television series would enjoy the movie no matter how bad it was.

Did I mention that mothers are always right?

Sex and the City 2: Where's the script?

As much as I wanted to enjoy Sex and the City 2, the movie's producer Michael Patrick King has conspired to make it almost impossible. Just as producers of a special effects movie like The Matrix treat the script as an afterthought, crafting just enough of a story line to call it a movie, producer Michael Patrick King of Sex and the City 2 seems to have forgotten to hire a screen writer. After outfitting the Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte characters in fabulous designer clothes and setting them in opulent apartments, hotels and restaurants, it appears the Sex and the City 2 producer suddenly realized the movie did not have a plot and quickly cobbled together enough of a story to make Sex and the City 2 barely more than just a two and a half hour infomercial for Halston, Dior and Chanel.

Sex and the City 2: Take my one liners, please...

What passes for comedy in Sex and the City 2 is a smattering of cringe-inducing one-liners that make you want to groan instead of grin: Carrie's comment about "Bedouin, Bath & Beyond" and Samantha's reference to "Lawrence of my labia" were just a couple of so-funny-I-forgot-to-laugh "quips" the actresses seemed almost too embarrassed to deliver.

As for psychological reality, Sex and the City 2 rings less true than an episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Would a real-life Carrie, who for years schemed to marry and domesticate Big, want to run around Manhattan every night like an Energizer social bunny? And would a real-life Charlotte, a woman with no outside job and a full-time nanny, be so frazzled by the typical misbehavior of two small girls she has to hide out in her kitchen pantry?

Sex and the City 2: More "whine" than Napa

Disappointingly, both Carrie and Charlotte had more "whine" in them than Napa Valley tourists, and I don't mean the grape variety. The incessant whining by the pampered princesses makes the average toddler seem reasonable in comparison. Carrie, who never uses her kitchen stove for anything more complicated than boiling water for tea, complains to her friends that Big always wants (gasp) take-out food for dinner instead of taking her out to eat at a nice restaurant. If you're picturing skinny Carrie forced by Big to eat a regular diet of pizza and tacos, save your sympathy: in Carrie's world, take-out is a fancy bag of Pan Asian delicacies. Meanwhile, Carrie's sob sister Charlotte is so flummoxed by childrearing, she shudders at the prospect of mothering children without a full-time nanny. "How do the women without help do it?" she whines to Miranda, who cluelessly replies "I don't fucking know. Here's to them."

Sex and the City 2: Over-the-topulent

The crassly commercial, natural resource wasting aspects of Sex and the City 2 seem dated and passe in 2010 America (where green now means being environmentally conscious, not flashing hundred dollar bills). When the Sex and the City 2 women go to Abu Dhabi, they are each provided with a separate car and driver. All I could think of as I watched the procession of cars ferry the women to the desert in their designer dresses was how much gas they were wasting. Obviously, there are no carpool lanes in the United Arab Emirates.

Sex and the City 2: What's good about it?

If it has any redeeming social value, Sex and the City 2 supports the idea that money does not buy happiness. With so many hard-working mothers today juggling marriage, children and jobs without the help of a full-time nanny-their food budgets so lean that take-out is a treat, not a tragedy-I suspect many women will leave the movie theater after watching Sex and the City 2 thankful that, although they have less material wealth than the spoiled women in the movie, they have far more appreciation for the non-tangible treasures they do have, a priceless gift that makes Carrie's coveted black diamond from Big seem like nothing more than a cheap bauble.