Review of Sex and the City 2 (2010) by Veronique K — 17 Feb 2011

The reason I chose to see sex and the city 2 was because I felt like bitching about chic flicks...my primary target is "eat, prayer and love" but the dvd-rental is more expensive because it's just released! yeah, there's an option of internet free-download but what's more miserable than watching a movie in your computer is to watch a bad movie in your computer (when the movie is good, it's easier to endure sitting in front of a computer for it)...get the logics? so the more practical and economic decision is to rent sex and the city 2 in a somehow cheaper price then watch it in your living room and get numb. haha.

And, it also pleases me that there's one person in my friend-list "want to see it." (ps) I do have a sense of cinephile morality that don't bitch a movie before you watch it even when it's obviously bad. if you wanna bitch about something, name your reason articulately (i definitely try my best). perhaps it's just the way I am, I prefer not to call you an asshole crudely, but when I do, I name all the reasons why you're an asshole without using the word asshole.

I'm no agist, but I do expect maturity from people (even from myself, but I try to manage it with struggles, for sure, just like everyone!) after a certain age, but the controversy here is: what's the right age for a person to be sophisticated? for the "girls" in sex and the city 2, 60?! 70?! maybe the right age for them is when botox stops working on their faces. (do I sound mean?) quite often, I feel they're living in disneyland, but come on, they're all over 40! everything about this movie is absolutely artificial and far from common senses. I did mention quite often about the idea of camp, a celebration of artifice, such as my praise over knight and day...but there's a sense of sincerity in camp, yeah, a naive self-love devoid of pretentiousness. (so it's not everything bad and fake is camp)..but sex and the city IS pretentious, encapsulated within the so called avant-garde third-wave feminism, and it has great deal to do with pop-culture ideologies in women, or let's be more specific, upper-middle class white women who have nothing to do but whine about life......and their vaginas!

I'd like to focus on three specific details (if you really care about synopsis, check imdb). I point them out because I consider them crucial for character-portrayals, this movie has involved a trip for these four "fabulous" women in "new middle-east" (ali abu). FIRSTLY, they emphasize in details on all the materialistic products they carry in their luggages, for example, samantha mentions about the books she carries: suzanne somers' "breakthrough to wellness" (serious reading to her), and she mentions something for relaxation: THE US MAGZINE. then four of them scream in hysteria. and I was thinking, what, you're over 40, and you're in a sort of exquisite society which tends to value taste (they emphasize that) and class..and the entertainment for your mind is THE US MAGZINE. are you just 16? what's so different between your mind and the mind of a high-school teenager with raging hermones? except the later doesn't need botox to look young. and, one of them is a supposedly well-reputed columnist. another one of them is allegedly a harvard-graduate. isn't it a bit too un-classy? kinda un-believable, isn't it?

SECONDLY, in this trip, samantha claims to her girlfriends that it's free due to her association with some tycoon in arabian world, and she keeps saying dubai is history and abu dahbi is the new fabulous middle-east. anyway, this movie poses a counterfeit attitude about their liberal welcome to the arabian exotica but somehow it keeps its superficial bombardments on the arabian culture, stereotyped racist remarks about the veiling obligation in arabian women and how sexually uptight those arabian men are. i'm not really familar with the arabian world and I might also be infected with that bias that arabian men are terrible sexists due to media presentation, but there's one part in this movie that is really hypocritical: samantha annoys the crowd of arabian men for showing off her cleaverage, then four of them escape into a secret room full of arabian housewives who actively offer helps for these four "fabulous" new-yorkers, then they take off their conventional arabian costumes and reveal themselves in the dresses from the latest catalogues of louis vutton, dior and gucci, and they're holding a book-party on the same god-damned book samantha mentions earlier: suzanna somer's "breakthru: eight stages to wellness"...it's like announcing that you third-world arabian women, under your conventional appearance, you all wanna emulate us by buying off those commodities of luxuries, we, rich american women, feel complacent to be copied and emulated while we're taking a plane to get away from your land of gender-inequalities. the only solace left for you is the commodities from the latest catagues of louis vutton, channel..you shall continue to contribute your money to our corporations even your life still stinks as hell. but we don't care as long as you continue to vent your discontentment through consummerism!

THIRDLY, the character of mr. BIG is depicted as a partially conventional man who favors old black-and-white movies, and the story keeps emphasizing his love of nostalgia. his favorite thing in the world is to watch clark gable and claudette colbert's "it happened one night" in bed and he prefers to stay home on his couch eating and relaxing with those nostalgic movies. I wonder the screenwriter's choice of describing mr. big as fan of nostalgia is because women all secrely wish their men to be cultured, conventional and sophisticated (nostalgia is a reference of all those qualities.) in the mean time, woman behaves like a spoilt 40-something fashion-princess who disregards her man's frustration over the fall of stock-market, insists on her man's companionship after one laborious day. carrie even tries to pay homage to claudette colbert by showing off her leg in arabian street for taxi. the movie even features one scene of mr. big talking to penelop cruz, who is a hot spanish bank-manager in the movie, and she discusses their shared concern for the stock market in the cocktail party while carrie remains in her girl-friend circle. and I thought he's going to cheat with penelope but I almost wish it to happen..think about it, if you were a rich not-bad-looking man who's worth billions, what kind of wife you would want? you would want a wife who shares some concerns of your work-labors, instead of picking on your faults all the time, showing her non-appreciation for your interests in nostalgia and expecting to be liberated like a signle woman while you generously provide every possible luxurious item for her? if I were him, I would think: why not just court and marry peneloppe cruz?! that's common sense.

Gee, i'm tired of complaining about it..my point is: I could understand why some men have prejudices about chick flicks, especially sex and the city, because those women just won't step out of their enclosed circle of life! so narcissistically self-absorbed as if the world only whirls around her, and worse of all, chick flicks now degenerate into a genre for narcissistic females who think the meaning of life is the expensive clothes you wear, the travelling catalogues (third-world nations are all on the map for such consumption of exotica) and the so-called "sparkle" with their significant the other. and what the "sparkle" is made of? MONEY! everything is about money. yes, money is important in this world. but please have the decency to bare it all instead of granting it a beautified name of love!

Sometimes, I have an indignant sentiment why women are still so narrow-minded and short-sighted after so many decades of revolutions? I mean, when I watch movies like sex and the city 2. (of course, not all women are like that, i'm not. but the movie is popular, supposedly its popularity reflects something in its patroning audience) in conclusion, the only achievement feminism revolutions have accomplished is that women wear less clothes, spend more money, and certainly much much more fuckable than they used to be. (profanity intended for my anguish)...come to think about it, men should be grateful to movies like sex and the city, it opens millions of gates for you fellows to have gratuitous sex! (conspiracy from men).

(as a matter of fact, sex and the city 2 is DIRECTED BY A MAN indeed. ha).