Our beloved girls — Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) — are back for the second installment of the Sex and the City movie enterprise. The fact that the film garnered over 32 million in its opening weekend is a testament to its loyal and ever present fan base.
As the film unfolds, we see that another two years has passed since we last glimpsed the girls and they are contending with new challenges. Miranda is trying to balance the demands of an overly critical law partner, Charlotte feels overwhelmed by her two children, Samantha is fighting menopause with every known cure available, and Carrie has settled into a modern domesticity with her now-husband Mr. Big (Chris Noth) but worries that the “sparkle” is already fading.
When Samantha’s PR connections present an opportunity for the girls to get-away to Abu Dhabi for an exotic, whirlwind holiday, they all seize the chance to take a needed break from their personal demons.
In the Middle East, the girls are swept away by the obscene opulence and glamour that is in sharp contrast to the women of the town, dressed in traditional niqab and seemingly more submissive than their American imported counterparts. Outside the realm of New York, however, the girls question the roles they have assumed and try to gain perspective.
Charlotte and Miranda grapple with the balancing act of motherhood, but the fact that they both employ full-time, live-in nannies loses the average woman’s sympathy vote. Indeed, in one scene when they muse about how “other women” handle motherhood without such help feels a bit patronizing. Samantha’s struggles with aging and the onset of menopause by becoming a walking pharmacy of lotions and potions and by dressing like a teenager. Without question, Cattrall is an attractive woman but wearing mini-dresses with revealing flesh cut-outs just makes her look ridiculous — and if anyone saw her against type performance in The Ghost Writer as the personal assistant/mistress to leading man Pierce Brosnan you know that she has the power to rock a business suit and look amazingly sexy. Here at times she looks like a sad desperate caricature of her former self.
But any fingers of blame should be pointed squarely in the direction of Carrie, clearly the spoiled child in the scenario. She has spent the last two years writing a novel about marriage and furnishing a luxury apartment for herself and Mr. Big. Her major crisis is that Mr. Big wants to spend more time there with her, watching TV, eating dinner in, and hanging out. Carrie rails against this seeming injustice by antagonizing and threatening her husband to the point of near estrangement. While vacationing, temptation arrives in the form of former fiancé Aidan (John Corbett) and Carrie’s imaginary, inflated problems could very quickly become serious and real. 
The Sex and the City girls are a little out of place and out of step in the United Arab Emirates. New York City is like a character in both the TV and film versions of Sex and the City — the fact that this setting is largely absent in the film is like a dear friend noticeably missed at a party.
The need also for the writers to try to create parallels between privileged New York women and women of Abu Dhabi seems too forced and after-school special gone wrong. Carrie getting a lukewarm reception to her new book is just not the same as women not being allowed to uncover themselves in public. Finding your voice and literally not being allowed to voice one are two totally different concepts. At times the women’s behavior — particularly Samantha’s — is both crass and culturally offensive. One would hope they would be old enough to know better.
Sex and the City is essentially a fairy tale for women. Indeed, our girls are modern Disney princesses, outfitted in ball gowns, expensive footwear, and exotic holidays to Abu Dhabi (even Carrie quips to Charlotte’s daughter, Lilly, that it is “Jasmine and Aladdin with cocktails”). But in order for a fairy tale to properly function and achieve its full circle arc, we need to feel genuinely for our heroines as they struggle and sacrifice in order to achieve their happily-ever-after endings. The problem with our girls is that they don’t have any real problems. They just think they do. And their resolutions lose a little sparkle when we come to this realization.