""There was so little sex.""
This was the comment my friend made after seeing ""Sex and the City 2."" Referring to the lack of literal humpin' and bumpin', she was unquestionably right. The nearly pornographic sex scenes common in the television series are almost completely absent for the show's second movie remake. But the more important form of sex the movie lacks is that of the original television show's title, the sex that brought to mind scenes of four New York women gossiping about dirty talk, romance and everything in between.
Hoping a sequel could do for ""SATC"" what Botox did for Sarah Jessica Parker's face—reinvent something that was fine from the start—writer and producer Michael Patrick King thought taking the infamous girlfriends to the Middle East for a vacation would be a welcome addition to the show's library. Wrong. Like Parker's face, the new product is unrecognizable and frightening, a change so bad that it's easy to forget the original masterpiece.
What was previously a deliciously brief window into the lives of single women has been transformed, both with this movie and the first, into something vastly unfamiliar to those who treasured the stories of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. From the characters to the plot lines to the messages, ""SATC2"" is completely devoid of everything the show embodied.
""Sex and the City"" was its characters. Their energy, beliefs and banter were what made the show popular and easy to relate to. While several of the show's familiar faces pop up in the film, all that is recognizable are their physical attributes: The personalities behind them don't resemble anything close to the personas we remember them as. The most notable character manipulations are that of Mr. Big and Aidan.
During the series, Aidan was the nice guy to Mr. Big's bad guy. He was the victim of Carrie's cheating, while Big was the beneficiary of it. In their respective relationships, Big made grandiose romantic gestures, while Aidan preferred to spend the evening in. They were Carrie's two great loves, but they were stark opposites of each other; and that's what made their love triangle so compelling.
In ""SATC2,"" these personas are completely switched. Aidan is now the adulator, who after taking Carrie out to an exotic dinner decides, despite being married with three kids, he's going to kiss her. The act is dumbfounding. Aidan was the moral compass to the series, a conservative take on love and loyalty. His kissing Carrie makes zero sense, and contradicts the Aidan millions of women fell in love with a decade ago.
Big also apparently suffers from a personality disorder. The man once fluent in romance bought Carrie a flat-screen television for their anniversary. Upon hearing of Carrie's infidelity, the former adulator scolds his wife for cheating, and then offers some marriage advice. The situation is laughable, even hypocritical. This is Big. He is the last person on earth qualified to offer marriage counseling, and yet here we find him.
Such changes insult the show and its fans. These men and their remarkably different personalities sparked a conversation among women: Aidan or Big? The nice (but maybe a little boring) guy or the romantic (but absolute asshole) guy? By dramatically changing the make-up of the characters, the original joy and conversation ""Sex and the City"" provided are unnecessarily voided, which confirms that a movie is more detrimental to its successor than it is valuable.
Beyond this jarring change exists numerous other problems, namely that King forgot a plot. The characters end in the same exact places they began, except maybe a little more tan. If a ""SATC"" movie can't advance the plot, especially without infringing upon the original show's key points, there is no point in making it.
""SATC"" fans were happy with the series' conclusion. Each woman found love, not only with men, but also with each other and New York City. Yes, it is hard to let a good thing die, but what is now being created is far from good. All the movie and its predecessor do is destroy the memory of a once great television show, and it's likely future movies would only do the same. The horse is dead, it's time we stopped beating it.
