Sex and the City 2

Directed by: Michael Patrick King

Movie Review By Michael Phillips

Two years ago, with the world economy about to be credit-default-swapped right in the kisser, the first "Sex and the City" feature made $415 million worldwide. Its pre-sold fan base, already nostalgic for Cosmopolitans, heaved a collective, economically envious sigh: Nice to see you four again. By the way, nice shoes.

Now, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda are back for "Sex and the City 2" and it's more like: Oh. You four again. It's truly a peculiar picture, though sure to be a success, because writer-director Michael Patrick King knows his audience. For an hour or so, beginning with the "Top Hat"-inspired wedding of Carrie's friends Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone), it's closer to the original HBO series' comic spirit and blithely raunchy nonchalance.

And a sloggy hour and a half later, you may feel like fomenting a revolution.

To begin with a shallow point …why have these women, photographed drearily and insanely costumed, become full-on drag queens? They're barely human anymore, though in "Sex 2" the Manhattan women are coping with theoretically relatable problems and relationship tangles. In supremely art-directed splendor, Carrie ( Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) argue over whether to go out on the town, or eat in, and whether it's bad to have a big flat-screen TV in the bedroom. Samantha ( Kim Cattrall, who always was the drag-queeniest of the lot) keeps attracting younger men with extremely firm buttocks.

On the flimsiest of pretexts she, Carrie, Charlotte ( Kristin Davis) and Miranda ( Cynthia Nixon) are junketed to Abu Dhabi. So it's fun, frolic, run-ins with old lovers (John Corbett shows up at a spice market as Carrie's blast from the past) and a teensy-tiny brush with crushing Islamic fundamentalist disdain for everything "Sex and the City" represents as the quintessence of capitalist extremism in quasi-human form.