Sex and the City 2 
 
 'Sex and the City 2' review: Ladies at premiere may dazzle, but movie offers sloppy seconds 
 
 Blankenhorn/AP Like Champagne left out overnight, Samantha, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte have lost their sparkle in 'Sex and the City 2'. WATCH VIDEO of the premiere below. 
 
 It's been two years since the first "Sex and the City" movie - and this shtick is getting old. 
 
 Though the sequel is a welcome return of the four women we know and love, it's tough not to acknowledge that if we were all friends in real life, at this point we'd probably stop taking their calls. 
 
 The city - long called the franchise's "fifth character" - takes a backseat this time. NYC is, in fact, the setting for much discontent: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is fretting that Big (Chris Noth) wants to snuggle on their expensive couch instead of hitting the town. 
 
 Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has a boss from hell who gives her the hand every time she speaks. Samantha (Kim 
 
 Cattrall) is desperately trying to stave off menopause, and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is going crazy from the sound of her kids' squawking, though, in true form, she'd never admit it. 
 
 So they escape to Abu Dhabi (stand-in: Morocco), at the invitation of a sheik who wants Samantha to rep his hotel and make it seem attractive to Americans. How could it not be? It's stunning, and the girls each get their own Maybach. 
 
 But like the journey in "The Wizard of Oz" (the imagery - from Carrie's gold-sequined Louboutin pumps to her exclaiming "We're not in Kansas anymore!" - is vivid), things aren't as la-dee-dah as they first seem. 
 
 As if she can't help it, Carrie kicks up some trouble for herself after finding Aidan (John Corbett), now a married dad of two, in a souk. She's dressed as Glinda the Good Witch in a poufy skirt and "J'adore Dior" T-shirt, and she looks like a maniac. But the drama that ensues is so been-there, done-that, you wonder if she has an emotional imbalance that keeps her perpetually dissatisfied with life. 
 
 Things fare better for Charlotte and Miranda, who bond over motherhood in the way most do - through cocktails. 
 
 And it's not surprising that Samantha eventually creates a culture clash (Oh, hadn't you heard? Abu Dhabi doesn't take kindly to public displays of affection.) that leads to one of the dumbest conflict resolutions ever caught on film. 
 
 The girls have hot bods, the clothes and scenery are sublimely sparkly and the zippy zingers fly. A gay wedding and karaoke round out the lady catnip. 
 
 It's over the top, and over the rainbow. But just like Carrie's worries about the "sparkle" leaving her marriage, this movie is like once-brilliant Champagne, carelessly left out overnight. And gone flat. 
 
 adiluna@nydailynews.com ||||| 
 
 
 
 Although they sneer at the very notion of religious faith, skeptics and atheists have their own martyrs—high among them Hypatia, the brilliant, beauteous, avowedly virginal fourth-century philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, and Carl Sagan pinup girl. In Alejandro Amenábar’s somber and bloody Agora, her big sandals are filled by Rachel Weisz, who has eyes so wide apart they seem made to take in the whole of the cosmos, and British diction so crisp and forceful that her words could carry far into space. That’s where we first hear her voice, in fact. As she mulls over the trajectories of the stars, the camera descends from on high, way on high, above the Earth itself, to Alexandria, the civilized Egyptian outpost of the teetering Roman Empire, and to the stone hall in which Hypatia holds forth while her students (male, besotted) drink in her words. Weisz is an excellent Hypatia. For all her intelligence, there’s something childish, off-kilter, vaguely otherworldly in her aura. She’s just the type to be gazing into the heavens while around her all hell breaks loose. 
 
 The title refers to the public space in front of Alexandria’s illustrious library, although in light of what happens there, a better one might be Agoraphobia. The ruling pagan Ptolemies (among them Michael Lonsdale as Hypatia’s father, the head librarian) attack the obstreperous Parabaloni Christians, who prove to be greater in numbers and more ferocious than the pagan pointy-heads anticipate. When the blood finally dries, the Christian rabble has overrun Alexandria (and the empire), the Ptolemies are kaput, the Jews are (again) in exile, and the library—the repository of centuries of Hellenic wisdom—has been turned into a barnyard. Agora doesn’t merely exalt the empirical outlook of Hypatia, it portrays religious faith—all religious faith—as monomaniacal superstition, a fount of anti-truth. Poor Hypatia is both behind and ahead of the curve. When the hallowed conceit that the cosmos revolves around Earth looks wobbly, damned if she’ll fit the data to the doctrine. She’ll get to the bottom (or top) of it even if humans turn out not to be the be-all and end-all. 
 
 Amenábar, who dramatized the schism between flesh and spirit in works as various as The Sea Inside and the ghost story The Others, allegedly didn’t set out to make a movie that cried “A plague on all your houses of worship!” He and co-writer Mateo Gil stumbled on Hypatia while researching a project about people who, in Gil’s words, “managed to rise above the circumstances of the moment of history in which they lived by looking up at the stars and wondering who we are, where we are, and what it all means.” Would that we all could be suitable subjects! In any case, Agora sticks to the arc laid out in Justin Pollard and Howard Reid’s fast-paced The Rise and Fall of Alexandria. (Pollard was a consultant.) It’s true that Hypatia probably spent more time on Neoplatonism than astronomy, but Neoplatonism would have been, by definition, less visual. Hypatia also didn’t have a slave-cum-student named Davus (Max Minghella) who was torn between his love for her and his burgeoning Christian faith, but Davus makes a good vehicle for dramatizing how even good, educated, imaginative people can be impelled to get their scriptures in a twist. One of the best moments is when Hypatia’s onetime student and suitor, the prefect Orestes (Oscar Isaac), pushes through a crowd that wants to rip him to shreds, yelling he’s as much of a Christian as they are. Cyril, the bishop who urges his followers to teach Orestes a lesson by visiting their wrath upon his “witch” and “whore,” is better known as “Saint Cyril.” 
 
 Given all the weighty colloquia, Agora has remarkably few bad laughs, and the CGI re-creations of ancient Alexandria are so detailed I wanted to freeze the frame and linger on the city’s layout. I did keep being jarred by the chief loudmouth Christian stone-thrower, who looks like Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, down to the gap in his front teeth. But maybe the early Christians are meant to look Semitic—they mostly were. It’s too bad Muhammad isn’t in this thing (he hadn’t been born), or fundamentalist Christians, Jews, and Muslims could bond on the Agora picket line and just for yuks hurl stones at the women waiting to get into Sex and the City 2. 
 
 The most depressing thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it seems to justify every nasty thing said and written about the series and first feature film. The SATC dynamic has always been fragile, but at its most affecting you could see beyond the costumes and artifice and feel the characters fighting for validation—and connecting with one another in their struggle. Now there’s nothing but surface. And what a surface. ||||| Red-Carpet Review: 'Sex and the City 2' Premiere 
 
 Email This The 'Sex and the City' ladies are back -- and they're back in a stylish way! 
 
 
 
 The 'Sex and the City 2' premiere was held tonight at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, and the red carpet was bursting with high style. And the four main actresses didn't disappoint their adoring, style-savvy public: each wore a jaw-dropping gown. 
 
 
 
 Sarah Jessica Parker glowed in a one-shouldered neon yellow Valentino gown, which she borrowed from the Valentino Collection, The 'Sex and the City' ladies are back -- and they're back in a stylish way!The 'Sex and the City 2' premiere was held tonight at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, and the red carpet was bursting with high style. And the four main actresses didn't disappoint their adoring, style-savvy public: each wore a jaw-dropping gown.Sarah Jessica Parker glowed in a one-shouldered neon yellow Valentino gown, which she borrowed from the Valentino Collection, USA Today reported. Her long, blonde, wavy hair and muted makeup perfectly complimented the bright gown. 
 
 Cynthia Nixon wore a form-fitting Carolina Herrera black gown with some gorgeous gold beading along the top of the bodice. Paired with a jeweled clutch and stunning earrings, she was in top form.Kristin Davis was very pretty in pink in her Jean Desses for Decades chiffon gown. Strapless and straight to the floor, it fit her personality -- and her character's personality -- perfectly.And Kim Cattrall looked phenomenal in a gold embellished Naeem Khan floor-length gown. The dress hugged her curves and showed off her fabulous-at-fifty figure perfectly.The star-studded event also featured appearances by other cast members, including Chris Noth, John Corbett, Jason Lewis, Willie Garson, Mario Cantone and David Eigenberg. Some other famous faces stopped by, including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Vanessa Williams, Donald Trump and wife Melania, Howard Stern and wife Beth Ostrosky, Liza Minnelli, Amanda Peet, Jerry Seinfeld and wife Jessica and 'Sex and the City' author Candace Bushnell. ||||| The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally, if you get my drift. Everything else in this deadly, brainless exercise in pointless tedium is dedicated to the screeching audacity of delusional self-importance that convinces these people the whole world is waiting desperately to watch two hours and 25 minutes of platform heels, fake orgasms and preposterous clothes. It is to movies what fried dough is to nutrition. 
 
 It has been two years since their last chick flick and in the interim, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda have turned from Cosmo girls who munch into cougar ladies who lunch. They still devote their lives to the credo that no crisis is ever so great that it can’t be solved by a new pair of Manolo Blahniks, but now there’s a difference. No longer waiting for orgasms, they’re waiting for menopause, and in all four cases, they’ve found it. No film has ever contained so many sloppy hairdos soaking wet from hot flashes. Tired of being called the heterosexual equivalent of Armistead Maupin’s gay West Coast lampoon Tales of the City in the San Francisco Chronicle, this installment opens with Carrie in a man’s tuxedo, playing the best man at a gay wedding almost as vulgar as the homophobic one-liners about the minister, played by-are you ready?-Liza Minnelli, who parodies herself by telling the congregation, “Marriage is serious … or so they tell me,” before blasting off with Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” 
 
 Carrie, a neurotic Black Belt shopper who lives for designer labels, and an occasional columnist who writes about being fabulous and single, has been married two years to Mr. Big (Chris Noth), who once dumped her at the altar. (Sarah Jessica Parker looks better after her face mole was surgically removed, so why does her hair look like 20 pounds of mattress stuffing?) Uptight, Waspy-turned-Jewess Charlotte (Kristin Davis) brings her bald Jewish husband, her two babies and a nanny without a bra. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is back with nice-guy bartender Steve (David Eigenberg), but still too preoccupied as a lawyer to pay much attention to her home life (although rarely seen so much as filing a brief). Samantha (Kim Cattrall), still the group slut who has slept with every eligible man in Manhattan and half of Brooklyn without learning anything about real life in the Porthault sheets, brings a new face that looks like some of the sutures are still in it and her usual stinging one-liners. (“It’s a gay wedding-what’s one more bitch with an attitude?”) These are the jokes, and since the four women dress like drag queens, it’s not always easy to tell the difference. 
 
 Substituting for a plot, the four bimbos brew trouble in paradise. Allergic to the kitchen, Carrie calls herself “more Coco Chanel than coq au vin” and wants to go out on the town every night, while Big pleads for osso buco at home and watching old black-and-white classics in bed like It Happened One Night. (The only sane person in the entire film, if you ask me.) Smith (Jason Lewis), the old squeeze Samantha turned into a Hollywood star by smearing sushi on her V-word, comes to town for his new movie premiere and puts a temporary smile on her face, although it sags again when Miley Cyrus shows up on the red carpet wearing the same dress. (Penélope Cruz also makes a cameo appearance as the senior VP of the Bank of Madrid. Who could make this stuff up?) You keep asking yourself, “Where is this going?” And the only answer you come up with is “Every place it’s already been before.” In the 2008 chapter, Carrie had a nervous breakdown in a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown that looked like a cloud of lemon meringue pie on the front steps of the New York Public Library, and her soulmates whisked her off to Mexico for mariachis, margaritas and a dose of Montezuma’s Revenge for Charlotte, who pooped in her lingerie. This time, after Mr. Big suggests two days a week off from marriage, they all drag Carrie to Abu Dhabi (played by Morocco), where more than an hour is wasted on camel rides, karaoke numbers and insulting Middle East jokes like “Abu Dhabi Doo,” “Bedouin, Bath and Beyond” and “Lawrence of My Labia.” A mild touch of feminism makes a brief appearance when a group of women covered in black confess they’ve been inspired by a forbidden book by their idol … Suzanne Somers!! Samantha gets arrested for nudity and kissing in public; Carrie loses her passport in the casbah; and they almost miss their return flight, which elicits from Samantha a mournful shriek: “I can’t be in menopause and coach!” 
 
 Dragging its deplorable carcass into infinity, Sex and the City 2 is so bad you can’t even watch the trailer. Almost everyone who has ever appeared on the TV series reappears to mutter two or three lines that contribute nothing to the film they’re in. 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. The insipid screenplay and catatonic direction seem chloroformed. Both are by Michael Patrick King. He’s an expert at product placement and marketing (the end credits list hundreds of free plugs for everything from limousines to breakfast cereal), but I seriously doubt if he could direct Jeeps in the middle of the Mojave desert. 
 
 When all this greed pays off with millions in box office receipts, the hacks responsible for Sex and the City 2 will say, “I told you so.” But that won’t make the movie any better. You can’t make caviar out of jujubes. 
 
 rreed@observer.com 
 
 Sex and the City 2 
 
 Running time 146 minutes 
 
 Written and directed by Michael Patrick King 
 
 Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Chris Noth 
 
 
 
 1 Eyeball out of 4 
 
 
 
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 Sex and the City 2 -- Film Review 
 
 "Sex and the City 2" 
 
 Bottom Line: Overlong sequel scores some choice, politically incorrect laughs. 
 
 Because the first "Sex and the City" movie turned out to be a boxoffice bonanza two years ago, there are a lot of women panting for the sequel, already planning their wardrobe for a girls' night out.So even if "Sex and the City 2" consisted of nothing but a two-and-a-half hour fashion show, it would draw crowds. But it also has the returning cast members in fine comic form, and it has more cutting-edge humor than the first movie. Critics will carp about the platitudes in the script and about the longueurs in the nearly 2 1/2-hour opus, but for the core audience, there will be no complaints about too much of a good thing. This picture is going to be a smash.Some of us who enjoyed the outrageous antics showcased in the HBO series created by Darren Star and executed in later years by Michael Patrick King (the writer-director of both films) found the first movie disappointingly bland. Instead of the bracing emphasis on sex, the focus shifted to less scintillating folderol about marriage. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) was jilted at the altar by her true love, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), but snared him in the end. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) also faced a crisis in her marriage but ended up in a clinch with hubby Steve (David Eigenberg). The new movie begins two years later at a wedding -- a gay wedding (in Connecticut). But though the two grooms are pledging their devotion, the gals are learning that marital bliss is more elusive than the first movie implied.Carrie and Big find themselves at odds over an issue that bedevils many couples: She loves to go out on the town, and he turns out to be a closet TV addict who wants to do nothing more than curl up on the couch watching old movies. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has achieved her dream life with two children, but the tots turn out to be maddening rather than adorable. Only Samantha (the consistently irresistible Kim Cattrall) remains defiantly single, waging her own personal war against menopause.These wan domestic squabbles are merely prelude to the movie's major plot development. Samantha is approached by an Arab sheik to devise a PR campaign for his business enterprises, and he offers to fly her and her three gal pals on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation to Abu Dhabi. (These scenes were filmed in Morocco.) Even in an escapist fantasy, the spectacle of women sinking into this billionaire's paradise at a time of widespread economic hardship initially seems creepy and off-putting. Soon, however, their Arab sojourn takes unexpected turns. First of all, Carrie encounters her old flame, Aidan (John Corbett), at the spice market, but even more importantly, she and her friends run up against the puritanical and misogynistic culture of the Middle East. The rather scathing portrayal of Muslim society no doubt will stir controversy, especially in a frothy summer entertainment, but there's something bracing about the film's saucy political incorrectness. Or is it politically correct? "SATC 2" is at once proudly feminist and blatantly anti-Muslim, which means that it might confound liberal viewers.Indicative of the film's contradictory stance is a scene in which the ladies perform a karaoke version of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" in an Abu Dhabi nightclub. An equally outrageous moment comes when the interlopers are rescued by a bunch of Muslim women who strip off their black robes to reveal the stylish Western outfits they are concealing beneath their discreet garb. These endearingly loopy scenes exhibit the tasteless humor that enlivened the TV series on its best nights.King's script isn't always well-balanced. Carrie's minor marital problems are given way too much attention, whereas the intriguing dilemmas of Miranda and Charlotte are downplayed. Nixon and Davis do, however, share one marvelous scene in which they vent their dissatisfactions with motherhood. It also is a pleasure to see Cattrall flaunt her sexual imperatives in front of her Arab hosts. Noth and Corbett are so appealing that we can sympathize with Carrie's romantic confusion. Liza Minnelli, Miley Cyrus and Penelope Cruz show up for amusing cameos.Technical credits are first-rate. Cinematographer John Thomas and production designer Jeremy Conway make the most of the exotic locations. Costume designer Patricia Field's outlandish creations will send many viewers to hog heaven. But it's hard to know what King and editor Michael Berenbaum were smoking when they let the film drag on at least 40 minutes too long. Even with its excesses, Carrie and company's excellent Arabian adventure will leave viewers thinking and arguing as well as swooning over the digs and the rags.
– Sex and the City 2 premiered in New York last night, and the early reviews are not good, to say the least. Read on—or, if you’d rather see the red carpet fashions from the premiere, click here. “The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally, if you get my drift,” writes Rex Reed in a scathing New York Observer review that goes on to call the movie a “deadly, brainless exercise in pointless tedium” and its characters “vain, narcissistic, selfish, superficial, and really rather stupid.” “The film is an epic eyesore,” declares David Edelstein of New York. Sarah Jessica Parker’s skin looks “leathery,” Cynthia Nixon is “mummified,” and Kim Cattrall looks “like a cross between (late) Mae West and (dead) Bea Arthur.” Carrie is again embroiled in drama, after a run-in with former flame Aidan, in a situation “so been-there, done-that, you wonder if she has an emotional imbalance that keeps her perpetually dissatisfied with life.”writes Amy DiLuna in the New York Daily News. In the Hollywood Reporter, Stephen Farber writes, “There's something bracing about the film's saucy political incorrectness” —but it still goes on “at least 40 minutes too long.”