Sex in the Sahara: Our SATC2 Review

For those of you who got confused by ad campaigns for the recent Sex and The City movie and accidentally bought tickets for Price of Persia: The Sands of Time, let me catch you up on the plot. (Spoiler Alert! If you’re sensitive to a spoiler, scroll down to the next paragraph…) The film starts out at the wedding of Stanford Blatch and Anthony Marantino, Carrie and Charlotte’s gay best friends. We then learn more: Charlotte’s home life is driving her a little crazy, Miranda’s sexist boss makes her dream of quitting her job and Carrie wants her marriage with Big to have more "sparkle," trying her utmost to keep things interesting. The solution? An all expenses paid trip to Abu-Dhabi gifted to Samantha by a wealthy hotelier from the United Arab Emirates, plus the return of Carrie’s ex, Aiden Shaw, to the mix. Samantha, who remains proudly single, spends most of her time with a metallic pill box dispensing forty some odd vitamins a day top hopefully keep her body "young" and her libido up. Given that she has no responsibility she can’t get out of, Samantha gladly accepts the UAE vacation on the condition she can bring the girls. Enter Sex in the Sahara, plus about thirty suitcases full of designer duds, an arrest for public indecency and an 80’s flashback.

Let me preface this review in saying that even if I was to find that the film consisted of me having to watch the four ladies eat pizza for two and a half hours I would be likely to still see the film in theaters twice and own it on DVD. That being said, my time estimate of SATC2 was spot on – within two and a half hours of movie the ladies changed outfits what seemed like hundreds of times and managed to eat, sleep, drink many a cocktail and have sex on multiple continents. Liza Minelli performed Beyoncé’s "Single Ladies," Samantha flicked off some Arabs while wearing a see-through tank top amidst a serious hot flash and Charlotte managed not to poop her pants this time around. Naturally, the clothes were my favorite part of the film, thanks to the overwhelming talent of costume designer Pat Field, but I equally was blown away by the interiors. Never in my life have I seen so many well-decorated spaces consecutively, and I grew up on the Upper East Side. Everything from Carrie’s closet to her living room chair to her kitchen appliances made me squeal and the amount of drop-crotch harem pants featured in the film made me warm and fuzzy inside (you all know I have a deep bond to a good blousy pantaloon). While too many scenes in the film could be seen as either unnecessary, offensive to Arabs or just for fashion’s sake, director Michael Patrick King gives SATC lovers enough for them not to realize that the plot is a complete circle, with storylines ending pretty much as they began. With a whole new slew of outfits to fawn over for the next year or so, this film could potentially set us all up for SATC3, which will likely take place in an incredibly fashionable yet oddly vintage-inspired outer space.