Recession? Carrie and friends revel in excess

? Early on in “Sex and the City 2,” Charlotte, Carrie’s stay-at-home-mom-on-Park-Avenue friend, is making pink-frosted cupcakes with her daughters.

One of the girls is also finger-painting, and suddenly she smacks her mom on the rear, leaving two bright red handprints on a cream-colored Valentino skirt. “Lily!” Charlotte screams in fury. “This is VINTAGE!”

Let’s leave aside the credulity-straining sight of a mother — any mother — making cupcakes and supervising finger-painting in vintage Valentino. Much less in cream.

Because the scene is typical of the film in another way. Charlotte, who doesn’t work but has a live-in nanny, is clearly not suffering a whit from the recession that’s hit New York since the first film. Neither is Carrie or Miranda — nor Samantha, unless you can blame menopause on the recession.

In fact, the downturn is virtually nowhere to be seen in “Sex and the City 2” — not in the still crazy-expensive fashions worn by all four women, the spacious apartments, or the wedding that opens the movie, featuring swans, a chorus in white tie and tails, and a wedding cake dripping in crystals.

As Carrie might say, “Recession, Schmecession!”

And most fans, if not critics, are saying: “Great! Because that’s sorta what we came for.”

That’s how Brayden LeBlanc sees it. “Listen, movies are fantasy,” said the marketing student in Los Angeles. “This isn’t a documentary. I don’t WANT to see a recession in this movie!”

LeBlanc says that’s even truer since he’s had his own economic hardships as a student living on little money. “I’m going through my own financial issues,” he said, “so I don’t need to see it on the screen. This is supposed to be fun.”

Harsh criticism

Lindy Christopher feels the same way. Recently laid off from her job at a medical center, she accompanied two friends at a Thursday afternoon showing of the film in midtown Manhattan — the three had come straight from a college graduation ceremony for one of them.

“Everyone has a different life,” said Christopher, 26. “This is their life, not mine,” she said of Carrie and her friends. “It didn’t bother me.”

Not that the group wasn’t a little disappointed in the film — at well over two hours it was too long, they said, the plot a little convoluted, Samantha’s sexual quips a little, well, gross. But they still enjoyed themselves, which is more than one can say for most film critics, who thus far have savaged the film.

“Callow, garish, ghastly, grisly,” wrote the Wall Street Journal. “Enervated, crass and gruesomely caricatured,” wrote the Washington Post. A “mortifying mess,” wrote USA Today. “Desperate, grating and a little sad,” wrote the New York Times. “Over-the-top ridiculous,” wrote The Associated Press.

So maybe they liked it overseas? “Incredibly boring,” wrote Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which also said the film was “on its way to becoming one of the most critically derided films of all time.”

And yet the movie was also being called critic-proof. If the lines of dressed-up women at theaters weren’t enough of a sign, Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com, said the film had made $14.2 million on Thursday alone, and the projection through Thursday was $75 million. (The first SATC movie, in 2008, brought in a huge $57 million on its first weekend, a three-day span.)

Fandango.com, the online ticketing service, said sales this time were slightly outpacing the 2008 film.

“It’s clear that the ‘Sex and the City’ franchise has not lost its (box-office) sparkle,” said Harry Medved, spokesman for Fandango.

One could also just ask Olivia Wong, who rushed out from work Thursday to catch a showing in Manhattan with two co-workers — to be followed, as so many “Sex and the City” showings are, by going out on the town.

“I haven’t read any reviews,” said Wong. “I wanted to come here with a clean slate.”

‘A slap in the face’

While Wong and her friends didn’t care about the flaunting of wealth in the film — in fact, they looked forward to it — not absolutely everyone feels that way.

Kasondra Williams is holding off a while before seeing the movie. She loved the TV show in its early days, when the characters were “young and cute and trendy,” she said. But she’s less interested in their lives now that they are older and wealthier.

“A lot of people that are going to watch this movie are not as rich as they are,” said Williams, 35, who works at a museum and as a part-time stylist for photo shoots. “It’s kind of a slap in the face to them.”

As for the argument that the movie is merely escapist entertainment, Williams doesn’t quite buy it. “OK, but then we come back to our own reality after watching this and feel even more miserable,” Williams said. “I also don’t like the message that as long as you look cute, everything’s going to fall into place.”