What I Liked and Didn't Like About Sex and the City 2

Liked
1. No Children Allowed (for Carrie and Big at least) Even in 2010, there seems to be this stigma that every married couple should want to have children, and, if they don't, they are selfish, horrible people. Not every couple is meant to raise kids nor should they want to, contrary to what the random couple at the wedding tells Carrie and Big. Kudos to the film for not apologizing for this stance and for not making Carrie and Big have a sudden change of heart at the end of the film (which I constantly feared they would).
2. Samantha's Meltdown "CONDOMS!...I HAVE SEX!...FUCK YOU, I'M AMERICAN!" This was quite literally the funniest meltdown I've seen since Cate Blanchett's immortal "HERE. I. AMMMMM!" in Notes on a Scandal.
3. Liza Minnelli The bitch has still got it. And it's crazy how much she sounds like her mother.
4. Inadvertent Humor I don't know which of these is funner: the idea of sex goddess Penélope Cruz as the president of the Bank of Barcelona, Kim Cattrall telling a group of young gay men, "I'm all natural! I've never had work done!" or the fact that both of these moments happen in the film irony-free.
5. Gay This whole film was shitting unicorns and rainbows. Brokeback Mountain seemed less gay than this film. There were so many "gay inhale" moments throughout the film I'm surprised some queen didn't pass out from a lack of oxygen.
6. Women Can Have It All There is one moment which sheds some light on what I presume the grand "point" of Sex and the City has come to be over the years. Miranda and Charlotte decide to have a drink at the bar in their hotel room when Miranda decides to try to get Charlotte to unload her motherhood guilt. To get her to open up, Charlotte says something to the effect of, "Men want women to either choose to be happy in their careers or with their family. They can't have it both because something's got to give." The Sex and the City women have always drawn a lot of unwarranted criticism for being superficial clotheswhores who live in another dimension that doesn't resemble the real world. But this isn't entirely true. Sure, they live in an escapist fantasy version of the real world, much like the world of Top Hat or any number of 1930's films, but they at least acknowledge some of the problems women have to deal with. It's still a man's world, unfortunately, and judging by the male critics' reaction to this film, they refuse to see things differently. Women can have it all, but it's the men who make them feel guilty for wanting to have it all. And, heaven forbid, if they want a few days for themselves away from their responsibilities, they are the worst women and mothers in the world...

Didn't Like
1. But How? ...The main problem with Sex and the City 2 is the fact that it really doesn't discuss this issue as in-depth as it should. I understand that this film is escapist fun, but in a movie with a 2.5 hour runtime, more than 3 minutes could have been devoted to defending themselves from all of the rabid haters.
2. Loss of Characterization I've never seen an episode of the TV series and my only exposure to these women is through the first movie (which I only saw for J. Hud!) so maybe this isn't my place to say, but I felt like even between the first and second films, the characters seemed to have undergone some whitewashing. Sure, Samantha was still a whore, but the other three felt less interesting as women this go-around. Miranda especially, who is my SATC doppelganger, wasn't a character so much as she was an encyclopedia of Middle Eastern knowledge.
3. Puns The phrase "interfuntion" is uttered at one point. Enough said.
4. "Haha, Aren't These Jokes Clever?" The one-liners felt so forced at some points. Not only where they completely artificial, earmarked as clever by the writer, but then the characters all had to laugh after every damn joke like it was the funniest thing ever said. For whatever reason, this irritates me in comedies more than anything else. It's not funny watching characters crack up at their own jokes.
5. The Fashion Listen, I'm all for women of a certain age embracing their sexuality and expressing themselves through designer fashions. But there comes a point when wearing some of the outfits Carrie and Samantha have to endure becomes embarrassing. There is a way to be sexy over 45 without having to dress like Miley Cyrus.

Overall Rating: C

Rants on Joshua

I have seen horror movies about murderers, psychotics, rapists, child molesters and other assorted social deviants. Monsters of all shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny bugs to vampires, have appeared before me. I have seen people stabbed in showers, attacked by enormous monsters, become possessed by the devil and catch a quickly mutating zombie virus. Aliens have busted out of guts, faces have been torn off and worn as masks and heads have become completely detached from bodies. I may not have seen "everything" when it comes to horror films, a genre I'm not as proficient in as I would like to be, but I would like to think I've seen a majority of the "types" of scares (whether an evil person, a monster or a psychological condition) horror films offer. I was wrong. One thing I have never seen was a film like George Ratliff's Joshua, a film about the horror of the emptiness and disconnection of today's modern family.

As most movies of this usually white-upper-class-specific subgenre start out, the Cairn family appears to be perfect. Dad Brad (Sam Rockwell) has a well-paying job as a financial analyst, affording his family a comfortable and privileged lifestyle. The mother, Abby (Vera Farmiga), is a stay-at-home mom who cares for her child prodigy son Joshua (Jacob Kogan). As the film opens, Abby has just given birth to a daughter, giving the impression that their perfect family has no become even more perfect with its latest member. But, as you are probably well aware, things are only starting to go downhill for the family. As hackneyed as this opening probably sounds on paper, Joshua quietly begins to play with its ideas about deceiving appearances. While presenting themselves as this "perfect" family, none of the characters seem to really fit or feel comfortable in the world they inhabit. Brad's boss acts friendly towards him, even calling him "buddy," but as the film moves in, it becomes clear that he and Brad do not see eye to eye on very important matters. As Brad's family life continuously grows more complicated and out of control, he is not able to focus his full attention on his work. Brad expects his boss to sympathize with what he's going through. Instead, his boss insists that work will provide a good distraction for him and does not seem to grasp the idea that Brad values his family's well-being over his job. Abby does not fit in with the other mothers at Joshua's school and has no outlets from her family besides her brother. Joshua is so intelligent his teacher thinks he should skip two grades, so it is no surprise that he is a bit of a loner and outcast in his school. At one point, his dad openly admits that he would have picked on Joshua back when he was a kid.

As disconnected from their upper-class surrounding as the family appears to be, they are just as disconnected from each other. Of course, neither Brad or Abby want to admit this to themselves and instead pass the blame on the baby. We are never shown what life is like for the family before the baby is born, but as soon as she comes home, the family and the film itself literally pushes Joshua out of the picture. As the proud parents, along with Brad's parents, fawn over the new baby, Joshua never appears in the same frame with them. Instead, he is always in a separate shot with his uncle, playing around on the piano. Later on, the film uses this technique again during a dinner scene to highlight even further how out of place Joshua is in the family. Ratliff continuously cuts between Joshua's awkward questions and demeanor and Brad and Abby stalling and attempting to find the right answers for his questions.

It is not as if you can entirely blame Brad and Abby for not knowing, at times, how to react to Joshua. He belongs to that beloved movie tradition of child characters who are wise beyond their years and act like mini-adults. Ratliff and Kogan amp up the natural creepiness that child actors possess for the ultimate benefit of the film. Sometimes, Joshua's creepiness serves to show just how empty Brad and Abby have become due to their upper-class lifestyle. When the family dog dies under mysterious circumstances (the film casts suspicion on Joshua but the mystery is never solved one way or another), Brad puts on a big display, sobbing uncontrollably in an exaggerated manner like he's in front of an audience. Joshua sees this and mimics him exactly, showing Brad just how ridiculous and insincere he looks. Other times, his creepiness is just a natural result of his high intelligence. How do you respond to your son when he tells you that it's okay if you don't love him or when he shows you the mummification process on his stuffed panda bear? Joshua's thought process and emotional age is so beyond what Brad and Abby are capable of handling, they truly have no idea what to say to him. This disconnect has gotten so deep that even a "normal" kid question like "Do you ever feel weird?" prompts Brad to mumble some bullshit answer that doesn't even answer the question.

As the film moves on and increasingly strange things happen to the family, all signs seem to point to Joshua. I mean, he's creepy, not exactly warm toward the new baby (video tape evidence of him telling the baby that "No one will ever love him" eventually surfaces) and has the ability to read people's emotions and manipulate them, so he must be the culprit, right? I'm not 100 percent sure. First of all, we never explicitly see Joshua harm anyone. He may say and do strange things, but the camera never catches him doing anything that Brad and Abby accuse him of. Secondly, the faster Brad slips into his increasing paranoia, the more his behaviors become suspicious. He's so convinced that Joshua is the cause of all the family's recent hardships, he literally locks him out his room and the kitchen cabinets, afraid of what he might do next. When Brad brings a psychologist to meet with Joshua and hopefully prove his suspicions, he's so anxious for vindication he practically leers at Joshua across the dinner table. After the psychologist reveals her findings (she thinks Joshua is being severely abused), Brad becomes enraged, convinced that Joshua had the foresight to look online and fake the results of the psychologist's art therapy tests. Eventually, bruises start to appear on Joshua and Brad manically tries to figure out who did it to him. Joshua refuses to answer, which makes way for a neat trick on the narrative's part. Is his refusal to answer an admittance of his guilt--he did it to himself and doesn't have anyone to blame--or is it proof that Brad is abusing him without realizing it? Has Brad descended so far into madness he starts hitting Joshua during hysterical fits and doesn't remember it afterwards? Joshua's silence makes sense since he might be afraid of prompting another attack if he accuses him directly to his face. So what's the answer? Who knows. Ratliff is clever enough to almost directly name Joshua as the bad guy but also sneak in hints that suggest that that resolution may be too clear cut. It's this ambiguity that's most striking about Joshua and will leave you pondering this film for days afterwards. A-