Where does one start with Sex and the City 2? The absurd notions of privilege or the total disregard for world politics would be a good place to begin. Yet we’re talking about a review proof movie, one aimed at a core audience as comic book movies are to easy lays, as attractive as horror films are to gore hounds. The producers have modeled a spear of gaucheness and thrust it into the heart of cinema.
For a film that runs two-and-a-half hours I could’ve used more than a minute of cameos by the likes of Miley Cyrus or Penelope Cruz. The quartet of distaff fashionmongers finds themselves in various predicaments and marital crisis even while jet setting around the world to Dubai and Abu Dhabi (lensed on Morocco). Samantha causes an incident by smooching, and more, in public. Of course while this drives the plot the situation unfolds with reams of ignorance of the actual laws of that country while stomping on good taste with high-heeled splendor.
On the other bracelet laden hand SATC2 does show a flair for cool one-liners that was absent from the first movie. One joke involving a pun on Lawrence of Arabia particularly sells and of course our heroines could hardly take a caravan through the desert without resorting to cameltoe comments.
At the preview I attended I was surrounded by as many beautiful women clothed to the nines in attractive dresses with ample cleavage, as I have ever sat through. The real problem with the concept is that SATC only had an edge when the ladies were single and using their wits as much as their sense of couture. How long can it be before the current cast fades out and the producers reboot the series with a bevy of twentysomething actresses caught between award winning roles and paycheck gigs? Compare the sophistication of the various characters here to say Carli Bruni the former singer and model now the first lady of France. Now that would be a movie.

- Michael Bergeron