Sex and the City 2 (***)

“It’s like 1998 all over again,” says Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) at one point in this sequel, naming the year Sex and the City premiered on HBO. In this case, that’s a good thing. The title may not show much originality, but the story returns to the strengths of the series—female bonding, glamorous settings, strange fashion choices, and tasteful double entendres—while updating us on the lives of the four gal pals.

A fabulous gay wedding kicks off the film, complete with Liza Minelli officiating. Marriage is, in fact, the theme, although the sexually rapacious Samantha (Kim Catrell) is still blessedly single. She’s now combating menopause with an array of pills and hormones. Lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and housemom Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are navigating the effects of career, children, and having a sexy nanny on their marriages. As for Carrie, she and Big (Chris Noth) are still working on theirs after two years, but thankfully that doesn’t take up half the film like in the first movie. It’s a much more episodic film, though like the first one it’s written and directed by Michael Patrick King.

The most unusual thing about the story is not the sex, but the city, which for about half of the runtime is not Manhattan, but Abu Dhabi. The reason the ladies wind up there is unimportant and barely plausible, but provides plenty of opportunities to show off luxury as well as outfits that, much of the time, might best be called get-ups. Placing the women in even this most modern part of the Middle East provides some amusing culture clash moments. As with the earlier film, the setting puts Samantha in a sexual straightjacket, as she can barely abide even the more relaxed standards afforded to foreigners. The difference is that here her inclination is to rebel—humorously—against them, whereas her attempts at monogamy in the first movie robbed her of her one salient personality feature. It also had her stuck in Los Angeles, away from the other women, and that separation is another mistake that doesn’t get repeated here. The strength of the Sex and the City franchise is not in the characters as individuals, but in the way that they play off of one another. Excepting some of the early scenes with Carrie and Big, most of the time the women are all together.

Sex and the City 2, while updating some storylines, doesn’t take the series in any bold new directions. Those who find the series to be a celebration of self-absorption and materialism will continue to find it so. (Carrie does, however, refer to something as a “waste of money,” which surely must be a rare phrase in her vocabulary.) If the last movie erred on the side of seriousness, the second movie does the opposite, while still seeming a bit bloated. But, despite some forced moments, it does a better job than the first of encompassing adult themes while keeping the light, witty tone of the television series.

IMDB link

viewed at Moorestown and reviewed 5/30/10