SATC2 Reviews Are In…

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

… and it's being compared to Gigli and a female Ishtar.

You ready?

First, let's see how it rates at Rotten Tomatoes:

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Oh… my. [UPDATE:  As more reviews roll in, it's down to 10%]

And the New York Times’ A.O. Scott says:

The ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense.

and then Wajahat Ali in Salon is all:

Michael Patrick King’s exquisitely tone-deaf movie is cinematic Viagra for Western cultural imperialists who still ignorantly and inaccurately paint the entire Middle East (and Iran) as a Shangri La in desperate need of liberation from ignorant, backward natives. 

That doesn’t sound fun AT ALL. Also in Salon, Andrew O’Hehir writes:

It would have been more merciful for writer-director Michael Patrick King to have rented Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda out to the “Saw” franchise.

Another Salon reviewer:

The stakes are so low that, during the girls' final madcap sprint through an outdoor market disguised in burqas, the unspeakable outcome they're trying to forestall is the possibility of having to fly home in coach.

Ella Hornaday of the Village Voice:

Sarah Jessica Parker is now 45 years old, and, frankly, I cannot stomach another moment of the simpering, mincing, hair-tossing, eyelash-batting little-girl shtick she's been pulling ever since she emerged…

Then there's Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post:

An enervated, crass and gruesomely caricatured trip to nowhere [that] seems conceived primarily to find new and more cynical ways to abuse the loyalty of its audience.

Ebert:

Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of Sex and the City 2 are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row.

Roeper:

Bad puns, fashion porn, domestic handwringing, contrived plot points, idiotic dialogue and offensive stereotypes. What's not to loathe?

Dave Edelstein of New York Magazine:

The most depressing thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it seems to justify every nasty thing said and written about the series and first feature film

Kyle Smith of the New York Post:

As tasteless as an Arabian cathouse, as worn-out as your 1998 flip-flops and as hideous as the mom jeans Carrie wears with a belly-baring gingham top, Sex and the City 2 is two of the worst movies of the year.

Amy DiLuna of the New York Daily News:

Though the sequel is a welcome return of the four women we know and love, it's tough not to acknowledge that if we were all friends in real life, at this point we'd probably stop taking their calls.

Well we could go on, and lift quotes from almost every major publication about how bad/not funny/rich in stereotypes the movie is, but you can do that for yourself:

And we'll just leave you with Lindy West, who writes for the Stranger:

“SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it’s my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car. It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.

…

“If I wasn’t rich, I’d definitely just kill myself right away with a knife!” says everyone in this movie without having to actually say it.

…

If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes. Good night.