A 'Sex And The City 2' Review By Two Actual Straight Men

David Cho: Hi Neel. Hmm. There’s something different about you. Have you been featured on the hit MTV show The City recently?
Neel Shah: Hilarious. Let’s talk about this MOVIE.
Neel: I should preface this conversation with two things:
Neel: 1) I enjoyed the TV series. Which is to say I would watch it when other people would turn it on, and not complain.
David: That’s a cute way to justify it.
Neel: 2) I did not entirely hate the first Sex And The City Movie.
David: Have you seen the entire series? (I have. Like, in the last four years.)
David: (Thanks HBO OnDemand and former girlfriend!)
Neel: No. I am familiar with the basic plot lines and character arcs, but I would estimate that I’ve seen, oh, 40% of the original series?
Neel: SAMANTHA IS THE SLUTTY ONE, RIGHT??
David: So more like 80%.
David: Got it.
Neel: Yes. Like the rule, in which you can safely cut in half the number of women a guy tells you he’s slept with.
Neel: Anyway.
David: Yeah, I’m not touching that one.

THE MOVIE

David: What did you think???
Neel: I thought it was perhaps the worst movie I’ve seen in the past three years.
Neel: Like, I am having a hard time thinking of something I hated more. You were sitting next to me. How many times do you think I checked my BlackBerry?
David: My cellphone battery was dead by the end of the movie.
Neel: The over/under would probably start at 50 times?
Neel: It was epically, cosmically, comically bad.
Neel: Actually not comically bad. There was nothing even remotely funny about its badness.
David: But more specifically, what did you not like?
David: To me, and maybe because I’d already read all of the bad stuff about it, and also because I had drank a fair amount to drink without eating dinner, I thought it was pretty much what I thought it would be?
David: SEX AND THE CITY IS NOT A PARTICULARLY CEREBRAL TV SHOW.
Neel: That is true.
David: Like, was it that far a departure from the TV show?
David: Or the first movie?
Neel: Yes.
David: How?
Neel: The show, in economical episodes, had at least had some pithy dialogue, and made some incisive comments about the nature of female friendship/dating mores/what shoes are totally great.
Neel: This movie, as far as I could tell, was about…
Neel: What, exactly?
David: You’re giving the TV series A LOT of credit.
David: So you would say this movie is something other than 7 (it’s 2 hours and 20 minutes folks) episodes back-to-back-to-back-to-etc?
Neel: It felt twice as long.
Neel: Look, I’m not saying that a popcorn chick flick like this has to actually “say” anything about anything of even remote significance. But this movie was about what, exactly?
Neel: These four women go to Abu Dhabi.
Neel: Stay in $22k-a-night suites.
Neel: Have their own sexy Arab butlers.
Neel: Drive around in white Maybachs.
Neel: And then flip out when something goes wrong and then they all of a sudden maybe have to fly back to New York IN COACH?
Neel: Come on.
David: To me, I almost think that you could throw this on TV now and people would be okay with it.
David: I MEAN, HAVE YOU SEEN THE ARC WHERE THEY GO TO LA?
David: See, my problem with the movie is less the execution.
David: But more with the premise.
David: I think that women talking about how annoying their kids are and menopause and etc. is less fun and entertaining than them talking about their sexy exploits and foibles!
Neel: Also, what the fuck was with the clothes in that movie?? It was like basically like watching Priscilla Queen of the Desert with more Louis Vuitton.
David: Well, I thought the clothes were alright. There were audible gasps in our crowd when she wore that one Galliano dress.
David: They weren’t “horrendous” per se.
David: But we’re not really the right people to gauge that.
Neel: Certainly not as horrendous as the puns.
David: Ba-dum-ching!
David: I mean! You say that, but SATC was always about the punnary!
David: Often horrible, horrible punnary!
David: There have been SNL skits about this very fact!
Neel: Maybe it was more palatable in episodic form?
Neel: Michael Patrick King needs to have his pun license taken away. Lawrence of my Labia? Bedouin Bath and Beyond?
David: We’re probably retreading on the other reviews that have lambasted the movie better, we should take this to a place where only we can go.
David: A male viewpoint on the characters and how awful they all are!
David: Both in personality and aesthetic!

Next: The Characters!

THE CHARACTERS

David: Who are the characters on SATC that you actually like?
Neel: I guess Charlotte?
Neel: I feel like she’s every guy’s favorite?
David: She’s the most attractive for sure, but as a character?
David: Do you like that prim sort of girl?
Neel: I will tell you that I derived no erotic pleasure from watching Kim Cattrall yelp as she is getting drilled on the hood of a jeep.
David: SPOILER ALERT!!!!
Neel: SORRY.
Neel: Personality-wise, are any really likeable?
David: I think the most redeeming characters, as much as the women like to complain about them, are the guys.
David: Steve
David: Smith Jared
David: Big
David: All a-okay in my book.
Neel: Yes.
Neel: The guys are all decently likeable.
David: Miranda = Terrible and insanely selfish.
Neel: YES.
Neel: Steve is a nice guy!
David: Well, he cheated on his wife in the last movie.
Neel: Because she was terrible!
David: So, likable, but human? I don’t know.
Neel: His cheating in the last movie was not some Tiger Woods shit.
David: Yeah, I hold a pretty anti-infidelity stance, but he was “driven into the arms of the other woman”, I guess?
Neel: Only once!
David: Once too many!
Neel: And felt really, terribly bad about it.
David: Yeah, I guess that’s true.
David: But women apparently identify with these characters?
David: Or rather, at least like spending time with them?
David: Which is why this TV show is one of the most impactful [ED. NOTE: NOT A WORD.] of our generation?
David: Presumably?
Neel: I feel like every time a female friend of mine is asked that question, she answers “Carrie.”
David: Is there a bigger disparity than the perceptions of how attractive Carrie is by women and by men?
David: I mean, she is nothing close to attractive.
David: But I have very vivid memories of girls from college arguing over how “beautiful she was”.
Neel: Agreed.
Neel: In general, women are TERRIBLE at gauging the attractiveness of other women.
David: Like “cute” girls that they set you up with?
David: Although Facebook has mitigated a lot of those issues.
Neel: I don’t know how many times a female friend of mine has been like, “Oh, I really want to set you up with X, she is SO HOT.”
Neel: And then you see a pic, and it’s like, “Whaaa?”
David: You know what though?
David: The digital equivalent of a girl’s recommendation on another girl’s attractiveness is the Macbook Photobooth picture.
David: Does anyone ever look unattractive in those?
David: If you see a girl who you’ve never seen IRL in a Macbook Photobooth picture, NEVER TRUST IT.
Neel: YES.
Neel: I think maybe it’s because girls like to pride themselves on having “attractive” friends, and so they lose perspective on whether or not they’re actually “objectively physically attractive” if they like them as people?
David: MOVING ON!

THE ABU DHABI/RACIST(?) STUFF

David: Thoughts?
Neel: Oh man.
Neel: I felt really sad to be American, or at least Indian-American, during this movie.
David: AGREE.
Neel: Did it make you uncomfortable?
David: It was weird that in a situation where you control everything that’s happening, you would make your characters seem like such obnoxious Americans.
David: The kind that you see abroad, that make you be all like, “Ughhhhhh.”
Neel: Basically watching these poor Arab dudes with waxed torsos parade around in service of these spoiled American hags?
David: One of them was Indian.
Neel: Yes. Gorran!
Neel: He was great.
David: Kind of good for you and your ilk.
David: Up until now all you’ve had is Kal Penn.
David: Which is cool.
Neel: He repped my peeps well.
David: How do you think Abu Dhabi feels about this movie?
Neel: If I was Abu Dhabi’s Minister of Tourism, I’d be pretty pissed!
Neel: These four white broads sashay in, can’t respect local customs, flip their shit out, throw a tantrum, and then run.
David: In the trailer there’s the line where Charlotte’s daughter compares it to Aladdin and Carrie says, “Yes, but with cocktails” (which, WTF?).
David: But also-
David: Didn’t it look sort of like Aladdin?
David: Like when they’re in the street fair.
David: You kind of expect a monkey to steal an apple and guards to chase him and his street urchin owner around while they participate an elaborate musical number?
Neel: It wasn’t just the stereotypes. It was their insanely boorish behavior in spite of the fact that these people were all going out of their way to make things extremely pleasant for them.
Neel: Like, I know Samantha prides herself on being sexually progressive or whatever, but does she really need to try to fondle some Dutch architect’s penis in public?
David: That pretty much says it all I guess!

FINAL THOUGHTS?

Neel: DO NOT SEE. Seriously.
David: I think our crowd liked it, and if you currently enjoy watching Sex And The City when it airs on TBS and HBO OnDemand, I don’t think you’ll hate it?
Neel: Did our crowd like it? Everyone I asked afterwards was like, “that was atrocious”
David: There was a lot of LOL-ing with the movie and not at it.
Neel: I guess some people laughed at some things?
Neel: But really. Is laughing at “some” things enough reason to sit through the other 2.5 hours of inexcusable garbage?