Sex and the City 2

Directed by Michael Patrick King

(R)

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If the first Sex and the City movie played like five episodes of the HBO series strung together, the sequel is “one episode stretched to the point of madness,” said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. While the 2008 film had its flaws, fans loved seeing their favorite characters transform from party girls into mature, modern women. Picking up just two years later, the sequel builds a paper-thin plot around a free trip to Abu Dhabi, shoving substance aside to give us “four nitwits flouncing through the desert in high heels.” With a premise this ridiculous, it’s as if the film only exists to “abuse the loyalty“ of fans, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. Underneath all the fashion and sex, the series had a “far more sober, clear-eyed view of female solidarity and autonomy.” With its material excesses and blithe insensitivity to Middle Eastern cultural customs, the sequel couldn’t feel more disconnected from our current economic and geopolitical reality, said Genevieve Koski in The A.V. Club. Carrie and friends have effectively squandered “whatever goodwill the franchise had left.”