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With several early summer films failing to live up to the hype and putting up...let’s just say underwhelming box office figures, Hollywood may be looking towards Memorial Day Weekend to start turning things around. While there’s no sense in hitting the panic button just yet, I wouldn’t put a lot of confidence in this weekend’s two releases’ ability to jump-start the perception of the summer season.

Of the two new films, Sex and the City 2: The Skankquel is far and away more likely to earn the most money, and more’s the pity for society. Opening a day early on Thursday, it’s the second wrap-up film to the long-running HBO series about the worst people in the world…sorry, I mean four wealthy socialites, obsessed with fashion, men and themselves. Sarah Jessica Parker returns as the weathered corpse of retrograde-feminism, Carrie Bradshaw, along with Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, but notably jettisoning their black sidekick from the last film, who apparently served her purpose to satisfy their conscience and can go now.

Bored with their disgustingly perfect lives of privilege and leisure, the girls decide that they need a vacation from all the hard work they do being useless and watching their nannies raise their kids, travelling to Abu Dhabi (or Morocco, standing in, since the UAE would definitely and tellingly not let them get away with this crap). Because nothing says female getaway like one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth! Surprisingly, some perspective does find its way into their lives there when they find out that – hey, women can’t show their faces and are often treated like property. It’s enough to put you off your cosmo.

While it’s only been two years since the last Sex and the City movie, this one finds itself arriving in a very different world, one rather openly hostile to the kind of pointless excess this series represents. In addition to the idea that it’s just a plain bad movie, reviewers have also teed off on the film for its vile point of view on the world, possibly creating a worldwide bile shortage. And yet, the wish-fulfillment instinct is strong enough that women (and gay men – this will have the least heterosexual men as a percentage of the audience in history) are still flocking to the film for viewing parties.

Seriously, why does this film exist – you made the last one specifically to give each character their happy ending! Oh right – that $150 million total that last one had, and you only have to pay your stars in botox, vodka and shoes. I think the culture has turned on this series a little but unfortunately not a lot, and it’ll still earn a pretty sizable amount over its five-day opening weekend, at around $50 million.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where all the husbands and boyfriends of the women seeing Sex and the City 2 will go, is the other opener this weekend. Based on the video game series about an acrobatic warrior with a dagger that has the ability to turn back time, it’s an action adventure film in the vein of The Mummy, or, well, Tomb Raider, a comparison this film likely wears with a fair amount of trepidation.

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