What a dog’s breakfast! And I don’t mean Sarah Jessica Parker. Or at least I don’t just mean her. The whole of Sex and the City 2 is a flagrant, farcical, wince-making attempt to cash in on the relative kudos of the previous film, and of course of the longer-running tv series.
This time round, under the flimsiest of pretexts, the spoilt, self-obsessed and increasingly unpleasant women head off to Abu Dhabi for a vacation of preening and falling about and whining and performing excruciatingly bad karaoke. In the process they do tremendous damage to the Emirate’s reputation as a tourism destination. And, like a fake Louis Vuitton bag – cheap, gaudy, inauthentic, dishonest and ugly – it wasn’t even filmed on location in the UAE. In spite of the efforts of the well-funded Abu Dhabi Film Commission, the production was wisely rejected by the censorship board and ultimately filmed in (an embarrassed and ashamed) Morocco instead.
The film’s utter lack of sincerity is literally gob-smacking and I found my mouth going “0” on more than one occasion – though the gay wedding scene is particularly, excruciatingly stomach-churning. Honestly – and this is from someone who liked the first movie – this film is utter, unadulterated rubbish. It may actually be an affront to Islam, but quite frankly, it’s also an affront to common sense, basic human decency and to anyone who ever bought a movie ticket.