Should you be watching Sex and the City 2? If one goes by movie reviews,all of us should stay away from Sex And The City 2,the flogged to death story about four glamourous 40-somethings in New York. The movie,the second to follow the hugely popular show on HBO was the first to celebrate agressive,sexually liberated women whose exploits might be considered shocking even by the most emancipated societies of the West. Personally,I stopped reading movie reviews a long time ago and rely completely on Facebook updates for feedback on films. I prefer a real persons point of view to reading somebody whos paid to have an opinion,hence is under pressure to find flaws to prove theyre doing their job. Nor am I interested in a long winded thesis on how the film compares with the directors previous movies. I just want to know if a movie is entertaining,whether its worth battling traffic for,or if its only worthy of a DVD watch. SATC 2 has been universally panned with the Daily Mail describing it as borderline racist. Other reviewers have called it contrived and straining under a painfully thin plot. These accusations are not unfounded,but really,nobody whos going to watch SATC 2 should be expecting an Oscar-winning,original,edge-of-your-seat kind of flick. It is what it is: an unabashedly,self congratulatory film with trendy women emerging from Maybachs,clad in Chanel and balancing on Manolo Blahnik shoes discussing men,jobs and kids while sipping Cosmopolitans. Trite and pretentious? Maybe. But the SATC audience already knows that after watching the series and Part 1. Besides,my Facebook updates paint an entirely different picture. One 30-something I know booked 20 tickets for her girlfriends and they tottered into a delhi movie hall after two hours at an adjoining pub. She says it was long,but she enjoyed it thoroughly. I guess the drinks would have helped. Another update said it was like an ad for the Middle East,but a good one. Incidently,despite the unflattering reviews,SATC 2 generated a record $32.1 million in its opening weekend which is pretty outstanding considering it is a film every critic hated. When it comes to box office returns for Hollywood or Bollywood films,critics just dont matter anymore,since with Twitter and Facebook everybody is a critic. In India,many of the award-winning Hollywood films have absolutely no takers unless theyre on the scale of Avatar. Sean Penns Milk survived barely a week last year,and The Hurt Locker came and went without causing a flutter. Precious,another Oscar-winning film (that got rave reviews),about an obese,sexually-abused black teenager with a kid with Down Syndrome has been unable to find a distributor in India. SATC 2,meanwhile,has opened well in Delhi and Mumbai. What does that say about us? We dont like too much reality on a Saturday night. (hutkayfilms@gmail.com)
