You know when certain straight friends, all with good intentions, suddenly get the inspiration of setting you up with another homo friend of theirs as if gay dating is like joining the dots: this friend is gay; that friend is gay – bingo! How could it possibly not work out?…

I know a lot of negative stuff has been written about Sex and the City 2, but one of the biggest crimes of the sequel is surely marrying off former arch enemies and ‘chalk and cheese’ gay characters Stanford Blatch and Anthony Marentino – it’s lazy writing and just doesn’t make any sense; a stunt at the beginning of the film to use up two long-running characters which pisses on the idea of gay individuality.

This is surprising when the movie is written by a gay man (Michael Patrick King). Stanford and Anthony might often have been too close to stereotype for comfort (wedding planner Anthony more so), but I always liked the fact they were so different; bitchy, queeny Anthony always looking for his next, great hook-up; while softer, quieter, home-maker type Stanny was constantly battling his insecurities and trying to navigate the gay scene.

The two got off to a bad start when Charlotte (displaying the kind of ill-advised match-making I mentioned above) threw them together for a short-lived blind date, Anthony sneeringly making his disappointment felt and Stanford running for the exit. Then, when Stanford appeared to have snared the man of his dreams, Anthony tried to scupper things by spreading it about how Stanny’s bf used to rent himself under the name ‘Mario’.

Now we’re supposed to buy into them walking off into the sunset together and putting all that in the past? The writing was on the wall in the first Sex and the City movie when the two, realising they had no better prospects, exchanged a brief, coy kiss on New Year’s Eve. I chose to dismiss it at the time, but turns out this was one of the things – along with everything else bad about the first movie – that they expanded upon for the second. I guess it does set things up for a very bitchy gay divorce in Sex and the City 3.