Chapter Two: Sex and the City 2
By Brett Beach
December 23, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Over the course of 12 years and several girlfriends, I have seen a fair number of Sex and the City episodes. I don’t know if I would ever be inspired to go back and see the ones I haven’t, or run all six seasons through from start to finish, not when there is Lost, The Wire, Friday Night Lights, True Blood, and probably a dozen other shows that I need to even begin! But I did have some familiarity with the SATC universe before I caught the first film its opening weekend in 2008 with my best friend and the sequel this past weekend with my current girlfriend.
I am attuned enough to have my favorite character - Charlotte, which I have been told is fairly obvious, and perhaps even more so, if I mention that it was the episode where she gets hooked on using the rabbit vibrator that sealed the deal. However, I must add that Cynthia Nixon is my favorite actress of the quartet, both on the show and particularly after seeing her in early roles in Little Darlings and Prince of the City this past summer, as well as finally catching up with her wonderful supporting performances in the Robert Altman cable miniseries Tanner ’88 and Tanner on Tanner several years back. She seems like the kind of actress who would always be cast as the friend of the lead in the romantic comedy genre, if she hadn’t wound up as part of a comedy series that became a cultural phenomenon.
I have quite a weird history of watching the feature films of television shows that I didn’t watch all that much or have never seen. Generally, I like them. I could never listen to a broadcast of Howard Stern all the way through, but I quite enjoyed his Private Parts. I have never spent a full 30 minutes in South Park, but I took in the full 82 minutes of Bigger, Longer & Uncut. I have watched maybe two or three episodes each of Kids in the Hall and Mystery Science Theater 3000 but caught MST3K: The Movie and Brain Candy both on opening day. And on and on. In doing some self-analysis, I am not sure if this implies that I really don’t have much of a ken for episodic TV or, considering how many movies I saw yearly through the '90s and much of the past decade, this was simply a reflection of the Law of Averages.
I use this as a lead-in to show that Sex and the City is different, in that I have seen numerous episodes, and in that there has been a Chapter Two (the same is true in both regards for The X-Files and yes, I do plan to get to I Want to Believe in 2011.) I have some definite opinions about Sex and the City 2 but one thing I can’t speak to, that seems to speak to a large number of people, is the movie’s (and series’) portrayal of life-long friendship among women.
I am, as you may have guessed after 18 months of this column, not a woman, but I also don’t have much long-term experience with friendship. At least, not Friendship as it is often presented in popular culture (If books, music, movies, and plays have completely fucked me up in regards to the idea of romantic love, they also haven’t done much to help me sort out the notion of friendship.) I have a small number of people I have known for many years, and thanks to social media like Facebook, I have “friended” a fair number of people from my past that I never thought I would encounter again (and may not, outside of the virtual world), but can I ever really say what they mean to me, or what I mean to them? Not really. It’s nice to engage in condoned covert surveillance, and to occasionally make a wry comment that elicits some response, but I don’t pretend that there is much beyond that. What is friendship?
I don’t know if Sex and the City has the answers (or that it ever has claimed to.) I have heard it referred to as a “fairy tale”, and I now wonder if it might be more for the idea that Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha have remained friends for 25 years than for its fashion, status, and money-centric view of New York City life. Regardless, there is a big difference between the TV show and movies and between the first movie and the second one.
The TV show, in being sitcom length - about 25 minutes - could let individual plots zoom in and dash out on a weekly basis, while allowing the larger picture to ebb and flow over a 13 part season. The movies, each clocking in at about two hours and 20 minutes sans credits (a running time of five episodes combined or a third of a season) both strive for event status, to justify a big ticket price and a ladies’ night out, but approach this in decidedly different ways.
The first movie combined enough plot for an entire season while precariously seesawing between raw emotion (Carrie’s despair after being stood up at the altar; Miranda’s shock and anger at learning of her husband’s affair) and, um, low-brow humor (Charlotte shitting her pants in Mexico, Samantha’s dog humping everything in sight). It also wrapped up everything nice and neat (even introducing Jennifer Hudson as an assistant for Carrie and then marrying her off at the end). It delivered everything a fan of the show could ask for (to my eyes) - just more so - and was met with decent reviews and a rousing $152 million domestic total ($262 million foreign) against a $65 million budget.
And Sex and the City 2? Critically, it was eviscerated as if it were a Michael Bay sequel. The movie was attacked, its glitz was attacked, its status as a product of and reflection upon the USA was attacked, the women were attacked, the characters were attacked, the cinematographer and director were attacked for making the women look intentionally unflattering in many shots. It was a bloodbath. On a much higher budget of $100 million, Sex and The City 2 ended up not making that back domestically ($95 million) and not quite grossing two times that on foreign shores ($188). In total, its worldwide gross underperformed the first by nearly 33%. The early signs were in that the returnees would be decreasing when, over the Memorial Day weekend, SATC2 took six days to equal what the first made in three.
Michael Patrick King, a longtime writer (31 episodes), director (10 episodes) and executive producer (the entire run) of the HBO series handled writing and directing gigs on both movies. He is the one to praise for what I liked about the first and to single out for all that stumbles hard in the sequel. He also co-produced both and he even secured a Shyamalan-esque “Written, Produced and Directed by” credit for SATC2. This latter is indicative, along with the blinged-out New Line Cinema logo that opens the film, of the navel-gazing, splashy, gaudy, exhausting and underwhelming bauble that is Sex and the City 2. If the first was plot-driven, this one feels set-piece driven. Since everything really was wrapped up with a bow at the end of the first movie, there were two choices for a new movie: 1) Dig deeper into the lives of the characters as they continue to age and attempt to find balance between personal, professional, domestic, and social spheres or 2) Send them all on a ridiculously lavish trip to the Middle East for a clashing of cultures and more groaningly awful puns (“Abu Dhabi doo!”) than you can shake a burka at. King, Darren Star, Sarah Jessica Parker and Warner Bros. opted for the latter.
I don’t make it a habit to go in with lowered expectations, but after the drubbing that SATC2 received, I was wary. And for the first half hour and times in the middle third, those fears were realized. Earlier this year, Edgar Wright adopted a strategy of overkill in adapting Scott Pilgrim vs the World and the result was electrifying. Here, King adopts a strategy of excess, as if every penny of that $100 million needed to be worked into the costumes and set design and visually accounted for and the result is simply . . .excessive.
The picture opens with a wedding, or as Charlotte squeals “my gay best friend is marrying [Carrie’s] gay best friend.” That shrill tone carries on through to what must be the gayest wedding ever (I believe I am quoting verbatim). So gay, in fact, that Liza Minnelli officiates and then later hoofs her way (with a show-biz veteran’s zeal, if not exactly her stamina) through a cover of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” It’s all very much jaw dropping, and not in a positive way. The mansion setting for the wedding is so bejeweled with glitter and flash (and a men’s a capella group) that it left me bewildered and bedazzled.
Then there is the matter of the characters themselves. I can not put my finger on the issue as eloquently as I would like, but the quartet of ladies we see in this opening sequence do not at all seem to be the same ones we left gathered in celebration 2 years ago. They seemed lobotomized, drained of their unique personalities and defining traits and reduced to ciphers. Now, their problems seem petty or are slanted as such - Carrie worries of becoming a stay at home couple with Mr. Big; Charlotte frets that her braless Irish nanny will seduce away her husband; Miranda is repeatedly shushed by her boss at work; Samantha, well, Samantha is fighting her age every step of the way, ingesting pills and potions to allow to fuck with the vigor of a woman half her age.
I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t emotional truths in there but whatever steps King takes to set these stories in motion all but grind to a halt when, for the weakest of plot devices, the ladies end up indulging in a week’s vacation in the United Arab Emirates (actually filmed in Africa) where most of the rest of the film takes place. In an equivalent to one action scene attempting to out-explosion another, the result is a travelogue that is really a catalog of extravagance and wealth: A private jet with individual sleeping berths in first class; $28,000 a night hotel suites; designer outfits and shoes worn atop camels for desert treks and lunches inside tents.
I don’t begrudge the ladies a chance to get out of town; after all there was the would-be honeymoon spa package they joined Carrie for after the wedding went bust-o. And yet, even that sequence seemed merely to be a set-up for the aforementioned soiling of Charlotte’s pants, which got Carrie to laugh and acknowledge there might still be humor left in the world. In SATC2, as they find themselves over six thousand miles from home, and with very little understanding of or respect for, local customs, I could only cringe as they come to very shallow truths about the lives of others. Even the most honest and emotional scene in the movie, Charlotte and Miranda tossing back drinks while allowing themselves to acknowledge how damned hard being a mother is, winds up undercut with a whiff of condescension, as they wonder about and then raise a toast to all the women “who do it without nannies.” The movie traffics in similar questionable “adult women power” - hauling out a fairly excruciating “I Am Woman” karaoke and the revelation that the designs from the latest NYC Fashion Week may be serving as stealth revolution for the silenced women of the Middle East.
It is also difficult for me to take Samantha in more than small doses. If she were a supporting character, it would be one thing. But in this sequel, even more than the other three women, she is reduced to near caricature: fearing hot flashes, lobbing awful puns (“Lawrence of my labia” wins the prize) and drooling at every tightly packaged cock in sight. I don’t object to her lust for sex, simply that the film makes it a one-dimensional trait. She has nothing interesting left to say or offer and her effect on me is like nails on chalkboard (or that of Karen on Will & Grace).
What did surprise me about the first film and here (although to lesser effect) is how well rounded the characters of the men are. This isn’t Steel Magnolias land where the men are daffy sideshows to the main attraction. Mr. Big, as embodied by the distinctly grown-up Chris Noth is a multi-faceted and complex mate, not simply jerkish one minute and suave the next. Evan Handler and David Eigenberg, as Charlotte and Miranda’s respective husbands, figure prominently in the first go-round and not so much here, but generate good cheer nonetheless and seem like they belong with the women they have married.
In the final analysis, I think I can clarify precisely where Sex and the City 2 lets me down. The first film entertained me, moved me unexpectedly, and finally allowed me to see what the big deal is about a custom-designed walk-in shoe closet. The sequel asks me to live in that shoe closet, surrounded by hundreds of pieces of designer foot apparel, and then wonders why I get antsy.
(I have finished with four minutes to spare.)
Next time: My oldest Chapter Two to date, from 1933, a portrait of a criminal mastermind in the German underworld. Enjoy the rest of your year and have a great kick-off to 2011!