If audience tracking surveys are correct, “Sex and the City 2” will become the very first chick flick — sorry, female-driven movie — to come in at No. 1 over the Memorial Day weekend. The first “Sex and the City” opened on May 30, 2008 — the weekend after Memorial Day — to a surprisingly robust $57 million. Forecasters are predicting the new flick, which opened last midnight, will collect somewhere in the mid-80 millions by the end of the day on Monday, with a four-day gross in the mid-60s.
This would be despite many mocking reviews, though the tally at Rotten Tomatoes, in the single-digits yesterday, today climbed to 17 percent positive reviews (10 percent among top critics). Most prominent among them is the 2.5 star (out of four) notice by the venerable Carrie Rickey at the Philadelphia Inquirer. She calls it “a champagne cocktail on a runaway train — fizzy, sparkly, giddy-making, and splashing all over the place.” My colleague Kyle Smith dismissed it with one star in a withering pan published yesterday.
Over at Metacritic, which converts reviews mostly from us dead-trees types to a 100-point scale, “SATC 2” is averaging a 33. The biggest booster listed there is one Gail Pennington of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with 75 points (3 stars out of four). “Sex and the City 2 will never be compared to “The Godfather, Part II,.’ ‘ she writes almost apologetically. “But it’s everything a fan could want in a sequel.”
“SATC 2” is going up against Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer’s video-game spinoff “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which got off to a rocky $18 million start last weekend when it opened overseas in 19 different countries. Reviews are running 50 percent favorable at Rotten Tomatoes; my two-star notice will be up on Friday. Expectations are for a four-day haul in the mid-40s, or about $20M behind those “SATC 2” ladies.
If predictions materialize, Carrie and Co.’s latest adventure would also be the top grossing R-rated film ever to open over Memorial Day weekend by a wide measure. That record has been held since 1993 by the Sylvester Stallone vehicle “Cliffhanger” with $20.5M. And the previous top-grossing chick flick bowing over the frame? Miss Julia Roberts in “Notting Hill,” which collected $27.7 million back in 1999, a very distant No. 2 to “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.”