There has already been a lot of talk about this second Sex and the City film along the lines of whether the franchise is feminist, pre-feminist, post-feminist, not feminist, was feminist once, for ten minutes, but didn’t like it, or pre- and post-feminist, in which case, it’s probably best to leave them to fight it out.
There has already been a lot of talk about this second Sex and the City film along the lines of whether the franchise is feminist, pre-feminist, post-feminist, not feminist, was feminist once, for ten minutes, but didn’t like it, or pre- and post-feminist, in which case, it’s probably best to leave them to fight it out. As Professor Susan Lipstein of the International School of Sex and the City Studies told me, ‘I’m minded to say it’s only a bit of fun, get a life, but I don’t want to talk myself out of a job, so instead I’ll say: buying handbags is always empowering, except in those instances when it’s not. Can I go now? I’m pooped.’ Actually, it may be there is only one question about Sex and the City and that question is this: is it still fun and amusing? It’s not: does it shave its legs? It’s: does it still have legs?
OK, I’m not going to go into all the girls and all their traits because if you know them you know them and if you don’t by now, then I’m guessing it’s not your thing. I understand that it’s not everybody’s thing. I think I saw Mark Kermode being dragged into the screening, sobbing and shouting, ‘No, no, don’t make me!’ Firstly, I do feel obliged to tell you it is way, way too long. It is two hours and 27 minutes which is far, far too long for anything unless you are flying from London to southern Spain. Any shorter, and you’d be in the sea.
Where are we at, though. Well, Carrie (SJP, like you didn’t know) is now married to Big (Chris Noth) and is kvetching that they don’t go out enough. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has a tricky new baby and that new baby has a hot nanny, who doesn’t wear a bra. ‘There should be a law against nannies like that,’ says Miranda. ‘There is,’ replies Carrie, ‘it’s called the Jude Law.’ What can I tell you? I laughed. Probably, Kermode’s sobbing was louder than my laugh, but it was a laugh all the same. Miranda? Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has a horrid new boss. And Samantha (Kim Cattrall)? She’s undergoing a comedy menopause and still has all the worst puns. She calls her Middle Eastern suitor her ‘Lawrence of My Labia’. I laughed again but had the good manners to do it discreetly, rather than, say, in Kermode’s face. In fact, as a general rule, no man likes you laughing about labias in his face, or so I have always found.
So, yes, there are some decent gags, but — and here is the sad bit — it’s also lost its heart somehow. It never really mattered what its gender politics were because we truly cared about the characters, or at least I did. But on this outing writer/director Michael Patrick King has moved the action from Manhattan to Abu Dhabi — Samantha has wangled a PR trip — and it’s just horrible. The show has always specialised in orgies of consumption, but never on this scale. The girls have a white limo each to drive from the airport. They each have a personal butler to patronise. They spend forever ogling the hotel’s high-end furniture. Carrie wanders the souk in a Dior evening dress, as you do. None of it makes them feel uncomfortable. None of them says, ‘This is daft. We don’t need a limo each. Behave!’ I’m not sure whose intelligence is being insulted here. Ours? Or theirs? It’s also quite dull. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone ogling a hotel’s high-end furniture, but it’s not that cinematic.
It lacks emotional heft, too. This is the other thing about Sex and the City: behind all the fashion hoo-ha and those ‘what is she wearing?’ moments and the objectification of men — always a hoot — there were moments of true emotional heft. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any sillier or emptier, it would grab you by the throat and thrash you about a bit. I cried, for example, when Big stood Carrie up on their wedding day in the last film. But, try as I might, I can’t care about Big not wanting to go out much. Why can’t Carrie go out without him, anyhow? Why has she spent two years doing up their apartment, if not to stay in more? This seems like a token conflict, just as all the conflicts seem to be token conflicts. And as for the performances, all the leads emote as if performing for children and not just any children, but thick children. In particular, I worry for Ms Davis, who does nothing but pull baby faces. What is that all about?
So, does Sex and the City still have legs? No, not really. Which is sad for us, and even sadder for Professor Lipstein. ‘I’ll probably be out of a job soon,’ she says. ‘I should have taken that chair at the Institute of Iron Man when I had the chance.’
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