Release: June 3
Running time: Three weeks
Rating: MA (strong sex scenes, Islamophobia, scenes of Carrie cross-dressing)

I saw the first Sex And The City film at its first public screening the night it opened with my then girlfriend. I'm not ashamed to say I was looking forward to it – I am an unabashed fan of the show. The chattering, excited women in the packed audience were also looking forward to it. As the curtains drew open and the familiar theme music played the cinema erupted into cheers and stomping of feet. I was shocked – I've never seen any response to a film's opening like that before or since.

And so it began, and our senses were relentlessly pounded for the interminable length of the film.

As it drew to an end, sometime two and a half weeks later, there was silence in the cinema. The women quietly shuffled out without a word. We all hated it. I've never seen a franchise destroy that level of collective goodwill before. It was quite stunning.

As for my girlfriend and I, the film put us in such a bad frame of mind that we got into an argument and almost broke up over it.

Unfortunately, such is the popularity of the show that the girls are back to pummel our senses into submission once again. It does not please me to tell you of this.

Sex And The City 2 (again, written and directed by Patrick Michael-King) is absolutely wretched, right from the beginning when Big finds a cross-dressing Carrie sexually attractive. While they are transported to a gay wedding featuring a male choir and officiated by Liza Minelli (the marriage may be illegal - Wikipedia doesn't mention whether she's a certified marriage celebrant or not), the audience is transported into Hell.

The first film made the substantial error of trying to pack an entire season of Sex And The City into two hours. This time evil overlord Michael-King has attempted to rectify this by placing the timeline of the film over four days. So what problems are the gals having this time around?

Poor Carrie. Despite having landed the rich husband and apartment of her dreams, she is still dissatisfied with life because - get this! - Big actually wants to stay at home and spend time with her instead of attending glamourous red carpet film openings like normal married couples. What a buzzkill.

Miranda has quit her job. That's pretty much it.

Charlotte is finding motherhood difficult to deal with, and obvious lessons like not baking cupcakes while wearing vintage clothing have yet to be learned. To make matters worse her (and her children's) nanny is, like, totally hot and she's worried her husband is going to cheat.

And finally, Samantha is still slutting it up, rubbing yams into her face and generally acting whorishly.

Oh, I nearly forgot, they abandon these problems and to go and skank it up in Au Dhabi for well over an hour.

This is where the film completely goes off the rails. The TV was successful because the characters were generally grounded and relatable. Women could see themselves and their friends in the foursome. Unfortunately, how many women are going to see themselves staying in a $22,000 a night hotel being waited on by handsome, young Arab men? The consumerism in the film is completely out of control and completely out of date. We've just been through a financial crisis, yet the girls have their own personal cars and drivers. They are flown first class. They get all this because Samantha has a meeting in a week with a rich sheik.

Is this supposed to appeal to those who have just lost their jobs?

Of course, four sexually liberated women in the most backwards society on Earth could have made for interesting viewing, but Michael-King's hamfisted approach completely cocks it up. It's hard to say what the worst scene in this never-ending sequence is.

Could it be...

a) When the girls sing I Am Woman at a local Abu Dhabi karaoke bar? Yeah, take that Muslim men.

b) When Samantha's bag falls open, condoms fall out and, cleavage flying everywhere, she shouts “CONDOMS CONDOMS I HAVE SEX!”

c) The girls being rescued by Muslim women who reveal they all wear the latest spring fashions under their burkas?

Personally, I will go for d) Miranda and Charlotte (the two awful mothers) sitting at a bar  blathering about how horrible their children are, how difficult it is to raise them, and pondering the eternally mysterious question of how women without full-time help cope.

I'll tell you how they cope – they don't abandon their children to live it up in Abu Dhabi for a week and they don't wear vintage clothing to make cupcakes. It's artificial moments like these that show how distanced the characters have become from their audience.

Perhaps Patrick Michael-King thinks he's creating escapism for women. It's hard to believe, but as the years have dragged by the women have become even more narcissistic, self obsessed and vain than ever. The characters have become shallow parodies of themselves, and even the once witty dialogue is now as stale as an eight year old bagel.

Who am I kidding? This film will make a bag of money and I'll see you all again in two years for Sex In The City 3: Bitch, Where's My Script?

VERDICT: FAIL