Release Date: May 27, 2010 MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre(s): Comedy
Film Review
Production
The girls are back, and one can only wish they had stayed away. In this continuation of the first “Sex and The City” film and HBO series, the four fictional women countless real women have come to admire, respect, and look to for both relationship advice and fashion forwardness have themselves gotten old.
Not old in the sense of their ages, even if they are all approaching middle age, but old and tired in the sense that these characters have lost the sparkle a viewer comes to expect from them. Without a clear plot to the film, we are left meandering through their boring and drab predicaments. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is trying to come to terms with married life and what it means for her social calendar, Charlotte (Kristen Davis) has found that being a mother is more work than she expected, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is at a career crossroads, and the once fabulous Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is doing everything she can to forego menopause, besides having sex with handsome young men.
In every way these life trials could have been sewn together into a piece about finding yourself later in life all over again and the hilarity that comes along with it; instead, they come across as making these women appear miserable. Even the expectation of witty one-liners and gut-wrenching laughter they have provided time and time again is non-existent.
A small dose of comedy is what you are given and it is not enough to balance out the dullness of every other moment in the film. Things do pick up when the girl’s head to Abu Dhabi but in a disgusting attempt at humor the film actually insults the culture and makes American’s look like the most ignorant and disrespectful people on the planet. Life has not turned out the way they intended or desired and it is the viewer who must live through the torture of watching the girl’s try and get back what they have lost in themselves. Only to realize that there is no coming back from a sad rendering of beloved characters as such is in this film.
Comedy Factor
Samantha, I know you are in there somewhere. Please, please come out. Samantha Jones has always been the backbone character for the comedy in the “Sex and The City” franchise. A viewer looks to her for outrageous comments, out of line antics, and altogether fun. In this movie, she is anything but the Samantha we know and love and it is thoroughly depressing.
As for the rest of the girl’s, they also suffer from the downer angle of comedy. There is a scene between Charlotte and Miranda discussing motherhood that is very funny but it is ruined by a lame Carrie drama moment that is really not anything to get all worked up about (blame that on the poor direction of the scene). In short, this round of Sex is trying very hard to get you to laugh but rarely ever succeeds.