THE LEGEND OF THE DISAPPOINTING SEQUEL

G and I walked down to Webster Place last evening to take in the 8pm showing of the hit movie "Sex and the City" only to have fate, and hundreds of women with the same plan, intervene and spoil what was sure to be an otherwise thrilling evening.

THE MOVIE WAS SOLD OUT. Yes, a Wednesday night movie.

We couldn't believe it. Not only that, but the box office was turning away droves of movie-goers at the door. All women. Not most, mind you - ALL. I was the ONLY man there, and had I not been wearing my wedding band, I would have felt like my wife's little gay friend.

But these are the things we do for love. Speaking of which, G returned the favor by agreeing to sit through Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Crystal Skull with me instead. We'd walked all that way - there was no sense in walking back just yet. Although in hindsight, we both wished we would have.

SPOILER ALERT - AS IN, THIS MOVIE WILL SPOIL YOUR EVENING

So - sequels tend to suck. We all know this. But I was holding out hope that the much-anticipated return of Indiana Jones would prove worth waiting for. Boy, was it not. It wasn't even worth waiting THROUGH. In all seriousness, we both considered walking out about half way through the movie. It was THAT absurdly poor. I haven't disliked a film this much since Armageddon. Remember that wildly ludicrous and predictable piece of crap?

Before I insult anyone who's already seen and LIKED the movie, I should qualify this review by admitting that my wife and I are movie snobs. We like silly things like plot. We like compelling storytelling devices. We like witty dialogue. We like well-developed characters.

We loathe the predictable.
We loathe the contrived.
We loathe the convenient.

This movie was a nauseating amalgam of all three.

We actually groaned in disgust about a dozen times from the mind-blowingly ridiculous plot. Whoever penned the screenplay for this outlandish waste of time should have their hands permanently wrapped in mittens so they can do us no more damage. Sadly, that may mean saying goodbye to George Lucas, whose name was co-credited with the story. Good riddance, captain fantasmic. Your best days are clearly behind you.

At times it felt like Spielberg and Lucas were in an epic battle to decide who could insult the intelligence of the audience more - deftly outdoing one another, obnoxiously impossible stunt after unimaginatively contrived circumstance. Killer ants. Aliens. A nuclear explosion. Deadly waterfalls. It was brutal.

Look - I get it. There's supposed to be a willingful suspension of disbelief where the audience understands that these things are unlikely or implausible, and is willing to accept the story despite its incongruencies with the world as we know it. But this was beyond ridiculous. It may as well have been in Narnia. Why even pretend this movie took place in this world? Raiders of the Lost Ark was a masterpiece for the very reason this one was a piece of shit: No matter how impossible things seemed in the original, there was always a part of you that thought, "well, maybe." You wanted to believe that Dr. Jones was able to escape death in creative ways, so you let things go. The storyline was simple - there was an ark, and an amazing race to find it.

But the writers here push us WAY outside the realm of what's even remotely possible. At no time was I thinking, "well, maybe." I was thinking, "Are you fucking kidding me? That's just plain insulting." But we suffered through it, nonetheless, because we'd paid $21 to see it. Not exactly the experience I had been hoping for. Some people think movies like this one are made for kids, but this was a violent, PG-13 rated movie that missed the mark there, too. Although it must have been okay for SOME people - at least two people clapped at the end of our showing. Although G thought they may have been clapping because it was finally over. I know I was relieved.

The movie let out at the same time as Sex and the City - which we gathered was a far better film from the parade of exuberant, chatty women laughing it up on the way out. G covered her ears to avoid hearing anything about the story, and I covered my face to hide the shame of having just stumbled out of a bloody shitstorm.

By the way, let me drop the 411 for all you single men out there. It's no secret - Sex and the City is a chick flick, but I didn't think I'd be the ONLY guy there to see it. If you are a single man in the city, you may want to hang around the cineplex for the next week or two. Just throwing that out there. And if you do decide to take in the movie itself, you'll likely enjoy it more than you think you will...the writers for that show are actually a gifted, insightful bunch. It's a shame they couldn't have tried their hand at IJ.

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