SEX AND THE CITY 2 – Why more is so much less.

Courtesy New Line Cinema

NMW’s editor Vanessa Edwards finds plenty of reasons to avoid the latest movie in the Sex and the City franchise.

There is so much to dislike about the new Sex and the City movie; the casual racism; the clothes (which at times border on pantomime costumes); the leaden and obvious script and the complete betrayal of the spirit of original series; it’s hard to choose where to start a review. However for me there is an even bigger crime; the film’s ludicrous and inappropriate obsession with financial excess.

The film opens with the unedifying spectacle of four women, who live luxury lifestyles in one of the world’s most affluent cities, whining and complaining about their bad luck. There have been no happy endings for Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte. Despite entering their forties and getting married, the girls seem genuinely surprised to discover that life is not all a bed of hand-picked, designer roses. Only Samantha clings on to her single-girl lifestyle and she is held up as a figure to lampoon and pity. Apparently she can see no value in any of her lifetime achievements, other than her ability to maintain a smooth face and rapacious sex drive.

Sex and the City 2 has become a product-placement cliché..

Watching Sex and the City 2 is like browsing through an Argos catalogue. The film displays scene after scene of things you can’t afford, promoted by bevy of blank-faced, anodyne models. The franchise has ceased to be a witty and insightful comment on the lives of modern women and become a product-placement cliché.. Along with the usual designer gear the film promotes a dreary directory of less glamorous consumer goods. Each of the women has a different brand of mobile phone (Charlotte mentions hers more often than Samantha mentions her private parts), Carrie’s biggest gripe is a flat screen television and there is even a plot built around a well-known make of luxury car.

The girls discover that excess doesn’t make you happy and then buy some more stuff (just in case.)

For a while it looks like this overwhelming buffet of consumerism might cheer up our heroines. In one scene they gasp in delight as they’re offered the chance to travel in FOUR luxury limousines. Perhaps they are each secretly delighted at being given the chance to avoid talking to the vacuous, self-obsessed friend who sat next to them on the flight over? But it doesn’t take long before they make the shock discovery that spending huge sums of other people’s money is not going to resolve the terrible lack of fulfilment in their lives. A valuable lesson is learned, they buy some more stuff (just in case they were wrong) and it’s cocktails all round.

Of course Sex and the City was always about excess. Nobody who admires a man nicknamed “Mr Big” is likely to be interested in philanthropy. But somehow I hoped that as the women (and their fans) aged, in changing economic times, the producers might have considered moving the series forward. Surely there are some valuable and interesting things to be said about the role of women in our changing world? Or perhaps the sad truth is that America only sings from one song sheet and that ditty is consumerism. It may not make anyone happy, but it keeps a few people singing all the way to the bank.