It was made as if the Great Recession never occurred, and therefore seems badly out of touch, celebrating luxury, fashion, and materialism like the series has always done. Also, there’s the possibility it’s just a really bad movie.
Here’s a shocker: I haven’t seen the movie. But I’m interested in how and why the reviews are so awful — there are lots of bad movies out there, after all. People don’t merely dislike this film; they’re disgusted by it. Offended. Insulted. Isn’t this just another movie? Apparently not. Apparently it’s tapped into the psyche of newly aware, newly frugal American consumers and feeds the rage against the rich and wasteful.
A Daily Beast writer defends SATC2 against the widespread backlash (see New York mag, for example) by saying that the complaints are a bit extreme, a bit overblown, a bit hypocritical:
… our current fervid post-boom angst and rage has fueled most of the bad reviews. It’s of a similar strain to the anti-Wall Street emotion gripping the country: These are rich people and they are terrible.
It used to be that we loved rich people; then recently we came to find them distasteful, or at least wasteful. And now America burns with a weird, left- and right-wing resentment. It’s been a long time since our country has been angry enough to come close to redistributing the wealth.
… now luxury is tainted. Luxury is for evil and rich people and we hate them! Unless they’re on the cover of Us Weekly? Oh it’s so hard to keep our feelings straight!
It’s also amazing that this dressed-up baby is getting thrown out with its bergamot-scented bathwater.