Sex and the City 2

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her pals (Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon) take an all-expenses-paid holiday to a luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi. With nearly everyone married now (except Cattrall’s ever-single Samantha), writer-director Michael Patrick King can’t explore the dating scene, so he just changes the scenery. The result is not enough sex, not enough city and hardly any story at all. Instead, King wallows in the clothes-and-shopping fetishes of the HBO series’ loyal audience; where the show was once about the hopes and dreams of the characters, now it’s more concerned with the fantasies of its viewers. The dialogue, once the show’s crown jewel, is tired and forced; Parker’s narration slips into banality and never struggles free, while even Cattrall’s quips have grown lame.