6-03-10 Movie Review:  Sex and the City 2

We need more of them, with the current movie scene being what it is, but there is only one non-commercial this week. It is tonight, Splendor in the Grass, Nathalie Wood and Warren Beatty in 1920’s Kansas with a script by William Inge. The Al Fresco movie at 129 N. Rock Island. Starts at 8 P.M. tonight.

I was warned by my best friend that Sex and the City 2 would be beyond male understanding, and even the four ladies I consulted after the show agreed with that; they loved the movie, laughed hilariously at it, but rated it 3 instead of 4 because they admitted that it had no plot and was mostly about dresses and shoes.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays a writer, but except for an adolescent sulk over a bad review, we learn nothing about publishing unless you count that a woman who has been married for two years and doesn’t seem to be doing well can publish a book of advice about marriage. Cynthia Nixon plays a corporate lawyer, but we learn nothing about what a corporate lawyer does except be unappreciated if she is female. Kim Cattrall is a marketer of sufficient importance to rate an all-expense-paid week in Abu Dhabi for her and three irrelevant friends, but we see nothing of her at work, and all she learns about Abu Dhabi is how a woman wearing a burka eats a French fry. And Kristen Davis doesn’t even learn that, because, to the surprise of her lady buddies, she is thinking about her family instead of noticing Muslim eating habits. Davis is the only one of these women who lives on a humble enough level for me to recognize, but even she horrified at the thought of flying coach class.

What the ladies do is threefold: sit around ultrafancy restaurants drinking out of tubular long-stem glasses; talking about men; and wearing dresses. The key man on Sex and the City 2 would seem to have been Costume Supervisor Mark Agnes, but with ten costumers credited, four assistants, another costume supervisor, and a costume designer named Patricia Field, it is not easy for a garage-sale shopper like me to decide where the credit should go. There is no shoe designer listed, which seems ungrateful, considering how the ladies feel about shoes.

Since at least twenty minutes of the two and a half hours are related to plot, I guess we should mention that neither Parker nor Davis is sure her husband can be trusted for a week, and Parker is not sure she can be. The men are sympathetic characters if you think they should put up with these women. There is no significant development in characterization, though there are gestures. It may be that the color white has some kind of symbolic value; even the camels are white. All problems are handled by shopping, especially for high-heeled shoes.

One piece of advice for women, who reportedly make up 90% of ticketbuyers for this shopping guide: leave your men at the bowling alley or someplace, because if they stay with you all the way through Sex and the City 2, they will not be in a mood you’ll want to deal with.