SEX AND THE CITY 2 - Welcome to the Animal House: The entire world of this film is so reprehensible in its unbridled ode to consumerism. Set primarily against the backdrop of religious fundamentalism, misogyny and exploitation of the poor while four bourgeois sows indulge themselves (and supposedly learn something to make their pathetic lives better) is simply beyond the pale.

Sex and the City 2 (2010) *
dir. Michael Patrick King AKA The Zookeeper
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker AKA Mr. Ed the Talking Horse, Kristin Davis AKA C.J. the Orangutan, Cynthia Nixon AKA Francis the Talking Mule, Kim Cattrall AKA Willy the Whale, Chris Noth AKA Ben the Rat and Liza Minnelli AKA Clarabelle Cow

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A few minutes into Sex and the City 2, you might find yourself wondering, "Who let the dogs out?"

Well, look in one direction and one direction only - gaze upon Michael Patrick King, the worst camera jockey (he doesn't deserve the title "director") who has ever inflicted his utter lack of taste and talent upon the silver screen. Once again, the four ratty dishrags who somehow managed to catch the attention of movie-goers the world over in the horrendous Sex and the City (based on the TV series I have never bothered to watch) are on the prowl and those of us who dare sit through all 146 minutes will have been deprived of considerable and precious time on this Earth.

Okay, let me repeat one sad fact: 146 MINUTES!!!

146 minutes in which nothing much happens save for shopping, whining, complaining, shopping, lusting, shopping, traveling, shopping, riding camels, dining, drinking, talking utter bone-headed nonsense, uttering lame double entendres and shopping.

So, where to begin?

Oh, who cares?

No... that's not fair. I am here to review the movie. I must continue.

Let's see if I can remember anything.

Have I mentioned there is... shopping?

Ah yes, I have.

Well, there are a few things I remember.

Early on in the movie, one thing I shall never forget is the sad appearance of Liza Minnelli who, playing herself, is presiding over the gay wedding of those two delightful fellows whose names I can't even remember (because I have never bothered to watch the series and I have successfully repressed the first feature). Now, the notion of Liza officiating at a gay wedding is, in theory, not too horrendous an idea. Unfortunately, she can barely utter her lines and we are forced to look at her face. Clearly suffering the ravages of plastic surgery, Minnelli makes the hatchet jobs on Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller so palatable, that one can imagine conjuring up THEIR horrific mugs to keep an erection going when ploughing some seed into a triple-bagger.

The gay wedding sequence itself - replete with a choir of gorgeous hunks singing "Sunrise, Sunset", delightful white bridges over ponds and fountains as well as, uh... swans, is enough to make one think that such a wedding reception might well be a lot of fun for gay OR straight couples. However, whatever magic this sequence could have had goes up in a puff of smoke by the fact that Michael Patrick King can't direct. He's not even a competent TV camera jockey. The camera, during this sequence especially, is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. All we get is the IDEA of the reception rather than experiencing and seeing it as it should be.

Another unforgettable moment involves, once again, Liza Minnelli. She is forced to perform a musical number during the wedding sequence and I swear to Jesus H. Christ Almighty that I thought I was watching a female impersonator "doing" Liza. Alas, it was not to be. It WAS Liza - in the flesh, all several tonnes of it. (With all her plastic surgery, hasn't she heard of liposuction?) I also realize I am denigrating the art of female impersonators everywhere by even suggesting such a thing. Nobody, but nobody does Liza in her prime like a great female impersonator and the makers of the film might have been better off doing so rather than forcing us to submit to the abomination of the real thing.

Let's see if I can remember the plot.

Is there a plot? Hmmm. I think so.

It appears to go something like this. Carrie (Sarah the talking horse) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth, furry friend of Willard and subject of Michael Jackson's hit love song to a rat) are richer than ever and snugger than bugs in a rug in their marriage. Or are they? Carrie, damn it all, misses going to fashionable openings and nightclubs every night on Mr. Big's arm. Poor thing. Mr. Big, however, is happier staying at home with his flat-screen television. Now, given that going out on the town with Carrie means he would have to put up with one or all of her ugly, neurotic, pathetic friends put me firmly in his corner on this one.

In fact, watching Chris Noth laying back and watching a flat screen television for 146 minutes might well have had more entertainment value than anything else in this abomination.

Okay, where was I?

Oh yeah, so Carrie's getting bored with marriage. This is no surprise since she has the mind of a 12-year-old. What's up, then, with the rest of the clothes-horse buffalo herd?

Well, Charlotte (Kristin Davis, the furry co-star "Clyde" of Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can) is happily married and blessed with two beautiful children. But is she REALLY happy? Well, not with that pinched face of hers. She's become obsessed with thoughts of her hubby cheating on her with their Irish nanny with gargantuan bra-less pendulums.

Christ, it's hard being a woman in the modern world.

Then there's Miranda (Cynthia Nixon the talking mule). Well, all seems pretty good with her. She's as bourgeois and stupid as ever and looks like she might be the most satisfied of all the girls.

Of course, none of this would be complete without Samantha (Kim Cattrall, free as Willy the whale) who has not changed much since the last picture. She's still trying to convince herself that she has sex appeal and lusts over anything on two legs with abs of steel. She also gets one of the worst lines in movie history. Ogling a handsome man in the desert she quips, "Lawrence of my labia!"

I'm still laughing.

Are you?

When Samantha lands a free, all expenses-paid trip for herself and her three best friends to the United Arab Emirates city of Abu Dhabi, we leave the confines of New York and sally forth to a new city where the gals can do what they do best. For most of the movie's interminable running time, our bovine foursome traipses around aimlessly on this hideous vacation. They shop, they pine, they whine, they sight-see and, oh yes, they shop.

The entire world of this film is so reprehensible in its unbridled ode to consumerism, but having the sequel primarily set in a world of religious fundamentalism, misogyny and exploitation of the poor while these four bourgeois sows indulge themselves (and supposedly learn something to make their pathetic lives better) is simply beyond the pale. Not only does each woman have their own personal servant (slave), not only do they go camel riding, but they are, at one point, adorned in horrendous fashions modeled after indigenous clothes that are meant to repress the women of Abu Dhabi. It's not only stupid and dull, but it's more offensive than any of the nasty jokes I or anyone else could make about this pointless movie.

And beyond any of the above mentioned transgressions, Sex and the City 2 is like going out to the movies to watch bad television on a big screen. Replete with closeups and dull two-shots, there is absolutely nothing going on in this picture to qualify it as a feature film other than its 146 minute running time.

But then, I've mentioned the running time, haven't I?

146 minutes!

Of nothing.

I was, and still am, agog!

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? - Because any day is a good day to release a few rancid turds upon Sarah Jessica Parker, let today be that day as today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Did You Hear About The Morgans? (2009) *
Dir. Marc Lawrence
Starring: Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Harper, Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

HIM:
Green Acres is the place to be,
Farm living is the life for me,
Land spread about so far and wide,
Keep Manhattan and give me that countryside.
HER:
New York is where I'd rather stay,
I get allergic smelling hay,
I just adore a Penthouse view,
Darling I love you, but give me Park Avenue.

Lyrics from the immortal television situation comedy "Green Acres"

There are many attributes of abomination infusing the insufferable romantic "comedy" Did You Hear About The Morgans?, but the most obvious indignity to humanity is, of course, Ms. Sarah Jessica Parker. Voted by the astute readers of Maxim as "The Un-Sexiest Person Alive", Ms. Parker is, to my uncharitable eyes, the most repulsive leading lady to ever expunge her viscous globs of gopher guts upon the silver screen.

Inspired, however, by the good cheer of the recent Christmas season, a more humane stance was called for in consideration of the noble virtues inherent in that of the two-legged ungulate mammal. As such, I have successfully repressed the title of the great novel and film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and instead, reminded myself that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and only skin-deep. With an earnest commitment to put aside my petty quibbles over Ms. Parker's looks, I decided instead to search beneath her equine visage and peel back the unsightly layer to glance deep into her very soul.

And what did I find?

The personality of a harridan.

So much for being charitable.

Sitting through Did You Hear About The Morgans? I was mouth agape as I bore witness to the affable shaggy-dog Hugh Grant (as a Manhattan lawyer) revealing how incalculably love-stricken he is with this braying glue factory reject. Ms. Parker purports to portray a real-estate baroness who makes the cover of New York magazine due to her apparent prowess in selling over-priced Manhattan properties to rich people.

Mr. Grant and Ms. Parker were once a lovingly married couple, but as Ms. Parker's fortunes in the real estate market rise, Mr. Grant's minimal exposure to Ms. Parker's pursed punim and castrating klafte, forces him to abandon the preferred alternative of palm action to satisfy his manly needs and instead indulge in a brief extra-marital affair. Alas, this act of dipping his wick into another vat of hot wax is the one and only straw that breaks the camel's back of their perfect marriage. (We know it was perfect because the script tells us it was.) Being separated from his filly for three long months, Mr. Grant is desperate to get her back. He successfully rustles up Ms. Parker in her horse flesh at a swanky fund-raiser for breast cancer and begs for an opportunity to spend some quality time to talk over their situation. She reluctantly agrees.

This is where the movie gets even worse and at this point, it's not all Ms. Parker's fault. The blame can be squarely shifted to the supremely untalented writer-director of this atrocity, Marc Lawrence - not just for the poor taste of casting Ms. Parker, but because he has rendered a work that reaches the nadir of his canon (as it were). Having written and directed the wretched Music and Lyrics and Two Weeks Notice, in addition to writing (so to speak) the screenplays for Miss Congeniality I and II and the grotesque remake of The Out-of-Towners and, lest we forget, his five long years of cranking out episodes of the moronic Michael J. Fox TV-series Family Ties, Mr. Lawrence has been rooted in the realm (such as it is) of "how low can one go?" and with this movie, manages to bore well below rock bottom.

Did You Hear About The Morgans? is one of the worst romantic comedies ever made - not only a paint-by-numbers rom-com, but an overblown episode of Green Acres. And that, I fear, is an insult to Green Acres.

When Mr. Grant and Ms. Parker witness a gangland slaying, they are shipped off from Manhattan to the middle of Nowheresville, Wyoming to serve out an indeterminate lngth of time in a witness protection program. The one tiny bright spot in this mess are the husband and wife U.S. Marshall team charged with guarding them, played by the attractive and delightful Sam Elliot and Mary Steenburgen. If only the movie had been about THEM. As the picture cross-pollinates with the fish-out-of-water genre, writer (as it were) Marc Lawrence, tosses in an evil hit man hell bent on tracking our couple down to rub them out.

The predictable course this journey takes is the gradual revelation that time in the wilderness is going to be an ideal backdrop for our lovebirds to get back together. We, the audience, then get to experience one "joke" after another as these dyed-in-the-wool big city folk learn the virtues of down home living, big box stores, air-brained small-town inbreds, and membership in the National Rifle Association. We even get to see Mr. Grant needing to use bear repellent and spray it in his own eyes - not just once, but - Whah-Whah! - TWICE!

In the parlance of many a New Yorker, "Oy, Gevault!"

Can the picture possibly get any worse? You bet! We're inflicted with witnessing how the rural inbreds of Wyoming come to appreciate the joys of new-fangled big-city ways in this backwards idyll.

It is, at this point, dear reader that I must admit - with some embarrassment - to literally vomiting on the floor of the theatre auditorium. I'd prefer to say the movie initiated this unexpected expulsion, but alas, I'd be a liar - it was, in fact some poorly masticated and undigested chunks of Schneider's all-beef hot dog that I purchased from the concession that managed to come up on me without enough warning to take leave of my seat.

But, I digress.

So, where does this all go? Well, it's probably no surprise that our couple reunites and that the threat of the hit man is laid to rest when the entire town of inbreds - man, woman and - YES! - child, pulls out their firearms and rescues Mr. Grant and Ms. Parker from the cold-hearted killer.

The even bigger shock is how a weakly integrated subplot of our couple's attempts to have children turns out. Earlier in the film, it's revealed that Mr. Grant is shooting blanks during the couple's indulgence in marital duties and that adoption is being pursued as an alternative to a natural childbirth that will never happen. Nowhere in the film does it suggest that it's Ms. Parker's fault for inspiring sterility in Mr. Grant, but we know better, don't we?

In any event, all wraps up sweetly when our couple adopts a baby from China, names it (I kid you not) after the small town in Wyoming where they re-discovered their love for each other AND, yes, you guessed it, Mr. Grant musters a decent shot on goal and Ms. Parker indeed becomes pregnant with her very own biologically-generated child.

All that finally remains by the end of the film is what our imagination can possibly conjure up for what might finally pop out of Ms. Parker's womb. Something, no doubt, that will make the creature that pops out of John Hurt's chest in Alien resemble Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie.