The Sex and The City ladies are continuing their tour promoting soulless conspicuous consumption and offensive throwaway plot lines. They were seen in Japan toasting their fat paychecks and fabulous outfits. Despite the terrible reviews and mediocre box office performance the show must go on.

Earlier today we reported that Sex and The City 2 was second at the box office this holiday weekend. When Monday was included, the film was actually third, with Shrek 4 in the lead and Prince of Persia second. Kaiser pointed me to this amusing recap of the Memorial Day box office results on Gawker, which makes the scary conclusion that we may be in for yet another Sex and The City if the numbers are right. I’ll quote from Box Office Mojo on how the movie performed as expected for a sequel, especially one as shabbily made as this:

Sex and the City 2 notched an estimated $37.1 million four-day weekend on approximately 6,100 screens at 3,445 locations, bringing its total to $51.4 million since its Thursday debut. That’s a huge step backwards from the first Sex and the City, which bagged $57 million on its first three-day weekend and had $68.1 million by day five. Distributor Warner Bros.’ exit polling indicated that a whopping 90 percent of Sex 2’s audience was female, and 54 percent was under 35 years old. By comparison, the first Sex’s opening weekend audience was 83 percent female.

Prince of Persia and Sex and the City 2 ranked a lowly 15th and 17th, respectively, among Memorial Day opening weekends and, in terms of estimated attendance, they wouldn’t even crack the Top 25. Based on their content and marketing, though, it would have been unreasonable to expect otherwise.

People seem to lose their heads in regards to sequels, but, aside from aberrations like The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Sex and the City 2 was closer to the way sequels are supposed to behave, though the movie’s marketers exacerbated the situation with a severe case of “sequelitis.” They assumed that the brand name was all they needed for another summer hit, delivering an utterly inessential and random sequel after the first movie tidily wrapped up the storylines. It’s a wonder that they didn’t subtitle the movie “The Legend of Carrie’s Shoes.”

[From Box Office Mojo]

I’ve passed a lot of time laughing at the terrible reviews of Sex and The City 2, with my favorite coming from Dustin Rowles at Pajiba. He likens SATC to Transformers 2 for women, but with designer duds instead of Megan Fox’s bouncing butt. There were so many excellent lines in his review it’s hard to know which ones to quote. My favorite was this one, “There’s a definite narrative pattern in SATC 2: Each of the four women does something banal individually, followed by a scene in which they get together and process that banality, usually while drinking and wearing something colorful or with feathers.” Kaiser’s favorite part was this:

If you were so inclined, there’s a lot you could take offense to here: Their disrespect of the culture, the extravagance they are afforded (they each get their own luxury car and their own butler), and the way they choose to comport themselves — not just in Abu Dhabi, but in the entire movie — while the country is mired in a recession. Is it tactless to release a movie that glorifies consumption during hard economic times? It seems like a petty complaint to lob against a Hollywood movie, which are often about wish fulfillment. But it’s an easy critique to offer up. Most offensive of all to me, however, were the groan-worthy puns and the hideous word play littered throughout the film (“Abu Dhabi Doo!” “Bedouin, Bath and Beyond,” “Lawrence of my Labia”).

[From Dustin Rowles at Pajiba]

So have you seen Sex and The City 2 and was it a semi-pleasurable way to waste two and a half hours? Could you turn off your brain and just drool at the shoes and clothes? Like men looking for T&A, there are much better ways to get some (online) than paying someone $10 to deliver it to you with a thin plot. I like my shoe and fashion porn silent.

Note: The term “Dog and Pony Show” is not meant as a negative reference to any of the actresses’ features. It’s meant as a traveling circus, and according to Wikipedia “The term has come to mean an elaborately staged performance, presentation, or event designed to sway or convince people. It is often used in reference to a series of informational events put on by a company or group.”