A Movie Review on Two Hours of Sleep.

Last night I went to the midnight showing of Sex and the City 2, because my best friend Morgan is still in town for a couple of days and because I've always loved the show. And because I'm crazy and somehow thought I'd be okay getting home at three in the morning and waking up at six.

I feel like a cliche saying I love Sex and the City since it seems sort of mandatory for women my age. We all love it. Even the people who say they don't secretly do.

A part of me also loves it because it is, at the heart, a show about a writer. When I moved to New York City after high school, I idolized Carrie Bradshaw. Mostly Sarah Jessica Parker. I even woke up at five a.m. with some of my college friends to wait in line to meet her at an appearance for her Gap campaign. I hugged her and got her autograph (still framed on my bookshelf) and she was beautiful and she smelled like fresh cut flowers. Oh my god I loved her.

Which is why I dragged myself out waaaay past my bedtime last night to see the new movie. I knew it wouldn't be great, but at least I could see those women again.

To say it was bad would be an understatement. And to say the two hours of sleep I got were worth seeing those four women continue their journeys would be the understatement of the year.

Unlike the show, the movie was about nothing. I'll argue the depth of the Sex and the City series with my women's studies professors (oh, I've done that too many times to count) until I'm blue in the face. It was a show about life, about women, about post-modern feminism, about, yes, fashion, and about four diverse, strong women trying to balance their unique quests for conventional happiness (marriage, babies, white picket fence) and modern demands (career, independence). But the movie was about none of that. It was just a two and a half hour slideshow of in-your-face glamour and ridiculous situations.

Andrew O'Hehir from Salon said it best so far:

"Indeed, this movie's offensive on many levels, but Arabs and Muslims don't get to feel special. It relies on stupid stereotypes because it's a stupid movie that's offensive to virtually everyone. It's offensive to the demographic it claims to adore -- straight women and gay men -- who are depicted, more than ever, as hopelessly obsessed with the surface of things, to the point where they forget there's anything below that. The only reason it isn't offensive to straight men is that there aren't any; Big is something else, a shambling, half-dead ghoul enslaved to a demonic harridan. (One of Carrie's old boyfriends makes a token reappearance and livens up the movie briefly, but he's a purely perfunctory complication.)

It's offensive to an entire audience who came of age with these women and who remain breathtakingly loyal, and out of nostalgic affection may not have the heart to turn away from them. It's offensive to King's own creations, toward whom he now seems to feel nothing but contempt. It's offensive because it keeps cattle-driving a franchise once based on sparkle and economy toward new heights of painful, frantic emptiness. I kept telling myself, over and over, that Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte -- the real, flawed, funny, recognizably human ones, not these lobotomized zombie replacements -- would never do anything so dumb."

Yeah. What he said. Save your money and get the extra sleep. I need a nap.