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.
The transformation of the girls from winsome wisecrackers into whiny bling-obsessed chuckleheads is complete.
After an endless 20-minute prologue at a gay wedding where Liza Minnelli croaks out “Single Ladies,” Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) complains that her hubby (Chris Noth) puts his feet on the furniture, watches too much TV and won’t go to parties — then throws a fit when, at a premiere, he chats up Penelope Cruz.
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Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) remains a corporate bore while Charlotte (Kristin Davis) frets, for no reason, that her husband might have an affair with their hot Irish nanny and bursts into tears when her daughter stains her Valentino skirt — while making muffins. Samantha (Kim Cattrall) gripes about hitting menopause, as 53-year-old women so often do, yet finds herself swarmed by muscled hotties.
She soothes everyone with a free trip to an Abu Dhabi resort where the rooms are worth
$22 grand a night. Carrie actually delivers the line, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” and writer-director Michael Patrick King’s pun dependence becomes as unbearable as the gilt décor. “I’m going to turn this inter-friend-tion into an inter-fun-tion!” . . . “Bedouin, bath and beyond” . . . Blah, Blah, Blahnik.
The girls aren’t interested in anything except shopping, drinking and strutting through the desert in slo-mo, but what’s most appalling is that they vamp to “I Am Woman” in this land of sand Nazis. A veil “cuts back on the Botox bill!” chirps Samantha. Har. In Abu Dhabi husbands can legally beat their wives — and Carrie thinks this place is Oz, a cure for her boredom with a zillionaire husband who, she complains, eats too much takeout. (She won’t cook because she’s more “Coco Chanel than Coq au vin.” Waiter: one divorce, please).
Complications? Carrie loses her passport when distracted by shoes. (Did Lindsay Lohan contribute to this script?) We nearly lose Charlotte when she chases a watch. Native women bond with our heroines — over shared love for the books of Suzanne Somers. A major problem gets solved in the end when Carrie gets more jewelry.
Despite its “Lawrence of Arabia” length, this film — the Sexless and the Self-Pitying — is as unfunny and shapeless as another famed desert epic. Just think of it as “Bitchtar.”