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Virginia M. Moncrieff

Virginia M. Moncrieff

Posted: May 28, 2010 06:21 AM

You could grow out your bangs, or meet your future husband, conceive and give birth or you could could go see the groaningly long Sex and the City 2.

But why bother when you can read some really clever reviews that skewer the film and actually make you laugh out loud. And you don't have to buy a ticket.

To save you endless trawling, here are some highlights (and add your own at the end).

You could say the backlash starts here but I prefer adjusting the lens and putting these in the file marked "Greatest Movie Write Offs of 2010."

Oh c'mon.

Michael Patrick King and those gals couldn't care less. Could they?

This film is an epic eyesore. It's as if they set out to make a movie that said, "You're right! We are hideous!" ---- David Edelstein - New York magazine
The ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense......Your watch will tell you that a shade less than two and a half hours have elapsed, but you may be shocked at just how much older you feel when the whole thing is over. ---- AO Scott - NY Times
The women-too old now to pout, whine and babble about their wet dreams, affluent and successful for reasons that are never clear-are all vain, narcissistic, selfish, superficial and really rather stupid. The actors work hard to perform triage, but they've been playing these roles so long they've grown moss. ---- Rex Reed - New York Observer
As tasteless as an Arabian cathouse, as worn-out as your 1998 flip-flops and as hideous as the mom jeans Carrie wears with a belly-baring gingham top, "Sex and the City 2" is two of the worst movies of the year......Despite its "Lawrence of Arabia" length, this film -- the Sexless and the Self-Pitying -- is as unfunny and shapeless as another famed desert epic. Just think of it as "Bitchtar." ---- Kyle Smith - New York Post
The movie's visual style is arthritic. Director Michael Patrick King covers the sitcom dialogue by dutifully cutting back and forth to whoever is speaking. ..... Carrie narrates the film, providing useful guidelines for those challenged by its intricacies. Sample: "Later that day, Big and I arrived home." ---- Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun Times
Thanks to writer-director Michael Patrick King, I now have a fair idea how it might feel to be stoned to death with scented candles. ----- Cliff Doerksen - Chicago Reader
I sensed a claustrophobic panic growing at the screening I attended. Like Martin Sheen waking from his uneasy slumber in Apocalypse Now and thinking: "Shit, I'm still in Saigon," various members of the audience would emerge from their periodic reveries and mumble out loud: "Shit, Carrie and her friends and by that token, we the audience, are still in Abu Dhabi. ---- Peter Bradshaw - Guardian UK
What might I have done wrong, in a past life or in this one, that I deserve to have my eyeballs seared by Sarah Jessica Parker's loony desert-princess getups? ....... To gaze upon a couple of amazingly well-groomed camels and realize that they have better hairdos than the human movie stars astride them? ----Stephanie Zacharek - moveline.com
It would have been more merciful for writer-director Michael Patrick King to have rented Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda out to the "Saw" franchise, or to Rob Zombie, so we could watch them get shot in the head or skinned alive by Arkansas rednecks. ---- Andrew O'Hehir - Salon.com

And the last word to Lindy West of Stranger.com

If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes. Good night.
 

Follow Virginia M. Moncrieff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vmmoncrieff

 
 
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
juna
gardens and organic vegies (veggies)
12:41 AM on 06/06/2010
These are wonderful, worthy of Dorothy Parker. Thank all the gods there are such clever people around! And thanks too for gathering these gems - the first time I've experienced anything enjoyable having to do with this movie.
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Virginia M. Moncrieff
08:34 PM on 06/06/2010
Ah! You are welcome Juna - they were too good not to share.
10:33 PM on 06/02/2010
I'm a scientist and I really liked the way this aspie architect geek analyzed the movie - it's been doing the rounds in England - it's a 'had enough' hilarious read. But what I liked most was that this article spoke of the the lack of dignity portrayed in the film, the sweatshops behind consumerism, the condition of U.A.E's construction workers, the pseudoscience behind the Somer's book, and of feminist Arab women who should not be stereotyped this way. This was a scathing take against consumerism and asking that there are more ways to self-esteem and lib for younger girls and to not get misguided by the message of seeing 'excessive sex and shopping' as the only way. She's been attacked by a few movie fans, but men and girls in engineering and science love her take.

http://gipsygeek.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/sweatshops-for-your-sex-the-city-too/

thought it was a good read.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
SuzanneZ
04:43 AM on 06/02/2010
Huh. These should have been funny, but most of them just strike me as weirdly hostile towards middle aged women. Not amusing at all.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
wasim ali
12:00 AM on 06/03/2010
er --- how? Can you point out one sentence therein that is hostile towards middle aged women in general? I think you might be drawing a very LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG bow.
03:49 PM on 06/03/2010
This has been true of a lot of reviews-- the awfulness of the movie (and it was awful) has apparently authorized a lot of reviewers and other commentators to indulge in really anti-woman jabs.
04:00 PM on 06/01/2010
Well a movie with a fan base of women and gay men, filmed about travel to a country where women are veiled and being gay is illegal because this idiot writer thought it would be in bad taste to have them appear too rich in NYC. Apparently this writer forgot that NYC was basically the 5th star of the show. It shows you are pumping a dry well creativity-wise when you have to resort to "Road-trip/fish out of water" plots. Ugh.
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laborgrunt
01:11 AM on 06/02/2010
I havent seen SATC2 but i agree taking it away from NYC was the biggest mistake.
01:27 PM on 06/01/2010
This movie really was terrible, eye-roll inducing and so over the top cheesy...and I am a huge fan of the series. As for how they look, I don't think it's a big surprise given their ages but just the stupid things they said and the fact that they didn't make these characters mature over all this time as real women would made the whole movie difficult to sit through (they could have cut out a good hour and a half of it and it wouldn't have made a difference). The only one I didn't find annoying was Charlotte. I hope they just end it here... I won't go see another one even though it was a fun excuse to have a night out with the girls.
05:09 PM on 06/01/2010
The person who wrote the movie has no concept of reality. The series was unrealistic but always had a little bit of reality in there. He wrote this movie as if he were writing copy for a travel catalogue.
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Virginia M. Moncrieff
08:36 PM on 06/06/2010
Yes it seems there is a distinct difference between the TV series and the films. So many people I know loved (and continue to love) the series but want to chuck bread rolls at the films. I hope the dreadful movies don't destroy the great memories of the TV shows.
12:52 PM on 06/01/2010
I need to find a way to use the word Bitchtar in my daily life
12:10 AM on 06/01/2010
I hope the trend of not allowing critics screen movies before they are released continues to spread .
I say you movie critics are irrelevant and damn you all.
I rather make my own opinion about the movies I decide to see.
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ledzepfan
Saving the world one Accounting problem at a time
01:38 PM on 06/01/2010
SJP? Is that you? "Damn you all", huh? If you get this excised about a movie, how are you about the Gulf Oil Spill?

Go see the movie if youi want, it's your money.
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YeahDonkey
So are you saying I have a small bio?
02:00 PM on 06/01/2010
then don't read them

problem solved
05:58 PM on 05/31/2010
The first time I read Lindy West's review, I laughed. It's vicious/funny.

Then I read it again.

The opening graph is a nasty meditation on 52-year old Samantha's assumedly dry, useless vagina. Euuuw, gross, she really intends to use that thing? The horror! The horror! Sew it up now!

Yes, this movie appears to suck, to squander what was good fun, and often true, about the series, and instead to glorify rich, spoiled woman -- and end up as materialist porn. But....

The criticism hurled at it is all about how too old the actresses are. It's bad enough the writer/producers/director didn't know WHAT TO DO WITH GROWN-UP WOMEN THAT MIGHT BE FUN TO WATCH. As a woman with a no longer 21-year old vagina, I am deeply distrubed by the ugly, agesit backlash. Expressed by women.

The film is a bad joke. Women over 21 are not.
02:03 PM on 06/01/2010
THANK YOU, xbrooklyngrrl! I had the exact same experience reading Lindy West's review. The level of ageism and misogyny displayed in reviews for this (admittedly, disappointing) flick are truly disturbing upon second glance. Funny sometimes, but ugly.
05:11 PM on 06/01/2010
My issue with her review...aside from whatyou both mentioned is that she seemed to act insulted that the movie would suggest the women over in Abu Dhabi would wear designer clothing under their veils. If she had ever bothered to meet women from those countries she would know that that was probably the one part of the movie that was actually accurate.
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aznurse
01:29 PM on 05/31/2010
hahahahahahahahaha!!!
and this has saved me money and time!
07:20 AM on 05/31/2010
Ha!! This article is genius!!
I haven't busted out in laughter like that in a long time!
You've got a new follower here....
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Virginia M. Moncrieff
08:37 PM on 06/06/2010
Well, so happy to do the run down for you!
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05:23 AM on 05/31/2010
Please, don't be shy, tell me what you really thought of it.....
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OtayPanky
You're welcome
11:02 AM on 05/31/2010
You have to learn to read between the lines.
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YeahDonkey
So are you saying I have a small bio?
09:39 PM on 05/30/2010
"So it's about three whores and their mother" ..........Brian Griffith
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OtayPanky
You're welcome
11:04 AM on 05/31/2010
Ooftie!
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napoleon68
02:46 PM on 05/31/2010
"it's about three hookers and their mother?" lisa simpson
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LiberalBuzz
Voting republican is voting against America.
08:57 PM on 05/30/2010
How's this one.

The friend slept through it and she said he was a fool for spending the money and then sleeping through it.

He said, "Who's a bigger fool, the one who watched it or the one who slept through it?"

BUT my favorite and this one is courtesy of a good friend of mine back East. His wife dragged him to see it and afterwards she APOLOGIZED to him.
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OtayPanky
You're welcome
11:05 AM on 05/31/2010
Maybe he got some decent "I'm sorry" sex out of the deal.
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MatthewHubbard
blogger, just not for HuffPo
08:47 PM on 05/30/2010
Another great take from David Cho and Neel Shah: "Review by Two Actual Straight Men."

http://www.theawl.com/2010/05/a-sex-and-the-city-2-review-by-two-actual-straight-men/1
07:23 PM on 05/30/2010
Salon.com review: Spot on!