Sex and the City 2 (movie) SPOILERS

 Notice that Sex and the City 2 came out end of May, which was when all the fashionistas rushed to the theaters (some of my friends included), and I just watched it yesterday.  If you wonder why, it's because I wasn't too thrilled about the first movie, especially the ending, and I wasn't too clear on why there is a second movie (except that Kim Cattrall is so old that the only part she can get is in another Sex and the City production, can't bash her when she looked the best out of the four in the movie though). Just beware of my attitude.

First of all, any of you who have seen the first movie will know that it ended in disaster, so the first thing the second movie did was establish that the disaster was not the end, but rather life went on afterward and now everyone's happy again. The wedding scene at the beginning did nothing else to  the movie (in terms of plot) except create this happy feeling in the audience, while introducing the characters after a few year break from the previous movie (Carrie and Mr. Big have now been married for two years).  Basically characters are coupled up, Carrie and Big are shown to not want children, and Samantha remains single and horny even at age 53.  In other words, not much has changed since movie 1.

The actual plot of the movie was rather...bland. First of all I've heard that there has been a lot of negative publicity regarding its Islam provocation. I didn't understand it at first, I mean really the movie was a promotional video for Morocco, specifically the hotel they went to ($22,000 a night!) in Abu Dhabi (I spent the whole movie trying to remember that name but I still had to google it). Even I wanted to go when I saw the hotel and the camels and the beautiful exotic decorations--and I hate sand. I watched this with yobo thinking, wow this must've been the most expensive tourist promotional video ever! There really was not much plot in Morocco except a) Samantha's provocative nature and b) Aden appearing out of nowhere for no other reason than to piss off Big and make Carrie feel guilty (it really did not make sense for him to be there --'). 

My biggest qualm with this movie is the karaoke scene in the nightclub (aside from all the completely unnecessary jabs at Muslim culture), where the guy on stage was so terrible I can't imagine anyone would let him sing in nightclubs (they usually test you first to see if you'll make customer's swoon or run away), and then the stars of the movie went on and sang a completely off song. "I am Woman" is not only old (as in I have never heard it before in my life), but it also doesn't fit the theme of the movie (the lyrics, yes, but the melody?!). They would've been better off singing Aretha Franklin or something.

Lastly, I do want to comment on the stereotyping in this movie. While I think it's great that they managed to show how Muslim women care about fashion and beauty underneath their veils (amongst themselves), I think that everything before that was a little unnecessary.  The fact that everyone else managed to respect the culture (to an extent, admittedly they didn't always cover their busts or shoulders) except Samantha shows that she really deserved what she got, and from a world perspective only serves as an example of what poor tourists Americans make (hence why they're unwelcome in so many countries).  Wonderful way to portray a PR person, eh?