REVIEW: 'Sex and the City 2' a peculiar kind of awful

When I heard “Sex and the City 2” would feature Liza Minelli performing “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” I steeled myself.

The forced kitsch promised in such a moment can be enough to melt your eyeballs. But I worried for nothing – or rather, for the wrong thing. Backed by two impersonators who look more like her than she does, Liza rocks the Beyonce song in the movie’s first fun moment. It is also the last, and it appears during the first 10 minutes of this two-and-a-half-hour death march in Manolos.

“Sex and the City 2” is awful in a way peculiar to sequels. It is the chapter when a franchise decides to make everything bigger and broader and gorges on its own trappings, its own reputation, its own popularity. This is the chapter with pointless celebrity walk-ons, not just Liza, but Miley Cyrus, Tim Gunn and Penelope Cruz.

In its own, romantic-comedy way, “Sex and the City 2” gives into the same excessive urges (and terrible punning) as “Batman & Robin.” While the bloated “Batman & Robin” was justifiably ridiculed and grounded the Caped Crusader’s film career for nearly a decade, “Sex and the City 2” probably won’t stop this franchise from rolling into a third sequel.

After the glum first film, where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) spent half the movie in a funk after Mr. Big (Chris Noth) stranded her at the altar, returning writer-director Michael Patrick King frames this one as an escapist romp. But King’s grand gesture, sending Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) to the Middle East for a modern Arabian Nights fantasy, becomes a disaster. The foursome’s shallowness and self-absorption may be amusing in Manhattan, but drop them into another culture and their ignorance becomes appalling. King doesn’t seem to care how often his script casually insults Muslim society.

The characters are more like their old TV selves. A raging storm of misery last time, Miranda is the group’s perky, highly organized cheerleader. After her experiment with monogamy, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is again raring to pounce on any male above the age of consent. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is prim and cute and judgmental.

Charlotte was the only lady who didn’t have a crisis in the first film, so King gives her one this time, however tepid. With a 2-year-old who never stops bawling, Charlotte hires a young Irish nanny (Alice Eve), a vivacious lass who never wears a bra and bounces as she walks. Or stands still. The girl’s torso has its own law of gravity. After Samantha makes a catty remark, Charlotte worries she has placed too much Gaelic temptation before her husband, Harry (Evan Handler).

Carrie has settled comfortably into her marriage with Big and, being Carrie, frets about the comfort. For a second anniversary gift, Big makes the boneheaded mistake of installing a high-definition TV in the bedroom instead of buying jewelry. In the midst of the domestic spat that follows, King probably realized to his horror that he was now writing an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” So out of nowhere he sends the ladies on an all-expenses-paid trip to an exclusive Abu Dhabi resort.

The script’s official excuse is that Samantha hopes to handle the resort’s PR. In terms of story, the trip gives Carrie a fidelity crisis when she runs into former beau Aidan (John Corbett) in a marketplace. But the true reason for the trip is to send the franchise into new vistas of glitz and glamour. As Samantha, always the blunt one, puts it, “We need to go someplace rich!”

Do they ever. At the Abu Dhabi airport, each woman is escorted to her own chauffeured Rolls-Royce. At the resort, each woman is assigned her own butler.

A fascination with the trappings of wealth – specifically, designer labels – has always been a “Sex and the City” hallmark. But here the franchise steps beyond wish fulfillment to prostrate itself before the golden calf of materialism. Consumption hasn’t been so conspicuous since the court of Caligula.

And just when you think this movie couldn’t become more unbearable, here comes the big karaoke scene. Yes, our heroines take the stage to belt out Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” in the most jaw-dropping spectacle of faux-empowerment since whatever Kate Gosselin did last week.

But no scene made me seethe as much as one shared by the two characters I always liked best, Miranda and Charlotte. As they vacation half a world away from their families in a $22,000-a-night suite, these two women with full-time nannies moan about the hardships of motherhood. Realizing they might be alienating much of their audience, they acknowledge that some mothers can’t afford nannies. In a patronizing gesture, they raise their glasses and say, “To them.”

On behalf of my own mother and the millions of other women who raised children without servants, may the two of you choke on your cosmopolitans.

‘Sex and the City 2’

1 ½ out of four stars

Rated R for some strong sexual content and language

Running time: 2 hours, 26 minutes