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Eagerly anticipating this week ... (14-24)
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10/01/2016

Sex and the City 2 (2010) - F the haters, love the fantasy

♥♥♥♥

 

1 Film Excess win:

Best Costumes: Pat Field  

1 Film Excess nomination:

Best Costumes: Pat Field (won)

 

Financial crisis, what...? One of the delightfully escapist posters for Michael Patrick King's Sex and the City 2

 

Two years have passed since the events of Sex and the City (2008): Carrie and Big are married, but they are still getting used to the new situation, when Samantha gets an offer she can't refuse from a sheik from Abu Dhabi. 


Sex and the City 2 is the sequel to the 2008 film, both based on the successful Sex and the City TV-series (1998-04)), which was based on the same-titled 1996 novel by Candace Bushnell, written and directed by great Pennsylvanian writer-director Michael Patrick King (The Comeback (2005-14)).

It is in many ways a totally ridiculous film; it runs an astounding 146 minutes, and any of the crises of the real world are light-years away from the on-screen portrayal. Liza Minnelli (Cabaret (1972)) performs (and wed) at the film's big gay wedding. The costumes, headed by Pat Field (Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)), are once again Oscar-worthy and delicious to behold. They are a major part of the film's spectacle but are also so over-the-top that they inhibit any attachment with reality. For a fan, however, this matters little, because the film is packed to the brim with frivolous (albeit extremely materialistically minded) fun and the four returning stars, who once again show their undeniable qualities and charm. Kim Cattrall (The Ghost Writer (2010)) has the film's best moment when she goes crazy in rebellion in an Arabian bazar. - It is a positive surprise that in spite of the film's swooning over the palaces of the desert city, (made possible, no doubt, through modern slavery which we never see), it ultimately hasn't got much positive to say of this proclaimed "New Middle East." Many ridiculous critics attacked the film vehemently and unfairly, calling it both racist, misogynistic and anti-Muslim, when it is in fact more accurately pro-Western, feministic pro-capitalism.

SPOILER Of course, the women's lib sup-plot has its own laughable exaggerations, (the burka-dressed women reading the same book as their liberated New-Yorker peers would be one), but these are also part of the infectious, honest and optimistic blow the film strikes for Western liberalism. 

Sex and the City 2, while not being as affecting or similar to the show as the first film, is still great fun. So break open a bottle of wine with friends or alone, blow a raspberry to the grumpy critics and just enjoy this enormously happy fantasy.

 

Related posts:


2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 










Watch a video about the fashion trends in the film here


Cost: Reportedly between 95-100 mil. $

Box office: 294.6 mil. $

= Box office success

[Sex and the City 2 was released May 27 and runs 146 minutes. The Abu Dhabi-centered plot was chosen due to the place's conceived high-fashion position and recession-free environment, however, the emirate withdrew its shooting permission, and shooting thus had to take place in Marrakech, Morocco instead. Filming took place in New York and Morocco from September - December 2009. The Moroccan shoot was supposed to take 13 days but ran for almost 6 weeks. Sarah Jessica Parker was paid an astounding 45 mil. $ (nearly half the total budget) for her work as producer and lead actress. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Shrek Forever After, with a 31 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for two more weeks and grossed 95.3 mil. $ (32.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 33.3 mil. $ (11.3 %) and Germany with 25.3 mil. $ (8.6 %). The film was nominated for 7 Raspberry Awards, 'winning' 3. The DVD/Blu-ray release of the film went #1 in North America and the UK with sales numbers not made public. Sex and the City 2 is rotten at 15 % with a 3.7 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]


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