Sex and the City: Le film

'Sex and the City,' based on the hilarious, poignant HBO comedy series of the same name, is grossly insulting. In a strong divorce from the series, the movie picks up five years after the series finale - where we find out that each one of the characters have become vapid, soulless versions of their former selves. Now, writer Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), and her friends Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), and Charlotte Goldenblatt (Kristen Davis) walk around New York obsessing over shoes, handbags, and love.

Carrie Bradshaw was, at the end of the show, an independent woman - not the needy girl she started out as. The movie turns it's back on Carrie's development as a character, shaping her into the stock romcom lead. Think Katherine Heigl with no charm. She is now painfully unfunny, shallow, and quite possibly retarded. She spends the first half the film setting herself up to have the man whom supposedly loves her jilt her - which he does. The second half of the film, Carrie spends complaining about literally everything, dying her hair brown, and discussing bags and love with a painfully useless, annoying Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie's new assistant Louise from Saint Louis.

CARRIE: "Louise from Saint Louis. Oh you brought me back to life." LOUISE: "And you gave me, Louise Vuitton."

Yes the writer of "The Real Me" and "A Woman's Right To Shoes" actually wrote this garbage.

Lawyer Miranda is now a frigid shrew who swats her deadbeat husband away like a fly every time he tries to get near her - and spends the entire 2.5 hours complaining about how marriage changed her, it made her move to Brooklyn. She is no longer likable, funny, or smart.

Meanwhile, housewife Charlotte spends the 2.5 hours prancing around like a little girl, screaming at the top of her lungs, and carrying her confused, Asian daughter around like a dog in a handbag. The problem with continuing Charlotte's storyline on the show is her storyline came to the only logical conclusion it could have had at the end of the show. Now, it' just a retread through old territory. Davis is ultimately given a thankless role in this film.

However, it is Samantha who is given the most honest adaptation. While certainly a cartoon version of her former self, Samantha's story revolves around her inability to maintain a monogamous relationship - despite being very much in love. However the payoff is ultimately ruined as Samantha is no longer human.

This incarnation of 'Sex' is so incredibly shallow - it basically acts a prop to advertise luxury goods. The most obvious scenes to illustrate this are when Carrie tries on designer wedding dresses for a Vogue shoot, which goes on for an excruciating 10 minutes, followed closely by Carrie and co. going through her closet trying to decide what to take to her new apartment with husband-to-be Big (Chris Noth). The scene is ultimately pointless as she is moving to a closet that is 10 times to the size - which, if you can imagine it - is actually a plot point in a film that will make you feel compelled to throw out every designer label you own. The show was about the importance of following your own trajectory, and self actualization. The film abandons this concept.

Girls love sex - especially when it comes packaged as, "big love of one's life." Who wouldn't? And 'The City' has nothing to do with stockbrokers. It's bright lights. Excitement. The girls' nights out. Successful, independent women. Expensive shoes. Designer label. Labels and love - the two big "l's". Big Apple. New York. City of Dreams. So is Sex and the City, the film version of an award-winning TV show, every girl's dream movie? The film – a short two and a half hours – successfully reprises the TV show format. A decade on in the lives of our characters and we follow them for another eventful year. Carrie now a successful book author - and sometimes contributor to Vogue. Says Kim Catrall (who plays Carrie's friend Samantha), "It was about women joining together as the new family, girlfriends sticking together through thick and thin." As a girl-bonding movie, it certainly works. On the way home, several hundred dresses to discuss, Manolo strappy sandals, and moral dilemmas like, if you have a secret that would hurt your best friend to know, should you 'fess up? Says, writer-producer-director Michael Patrick King, "Miranda's the sarcastic, sort of angry, one. Charlotte's the sweeter, sort of preppy one, the more traditional one. Samantha's the sexy, sort of power-hungry one. And then, there's Carrie, the indefinable one." Their TV personas are already developed and, unlike many TV-shows-made-into-movies, Sex and the City doesn't try to go overboard but develops existing characters and situations.

Although everything in the film is well-signposted, I don't want to give anything away. As with genre films, it's the small variations of plot that make it satisfying. A couple of scenes stand out for me. One is where Samantha covers her naked body with hand-made sushi as a Valentine's gift. Beautifully shot, it illustrates her outrageous sexual appetite in a moment that is genuinely artistic and more memorable than a bedroom full of dildos wrapped in cling-film. More clichéd, is the man next door having a slow-motion outdoor shower, but even that didn't seem out of place given Samantha's showy temperament and transfixed gaze.

The plot development where Miranda makes an unguarded comment which she is afraid to tell Carrie is well-handled. The restaurant scene where Miranda finally screws up the courage is believable and dramatic while still retaining its humour.

But I felt it would be unfair to review this film from a male-only point of view, so duly took my partner along. I tried to set the mood with Shiraz and Spanish tapas, casually asking what she thought of the TV series. "It's the ultimate sell-out!" she says. I was taken aback. I thought it was about strong, liberated women of today? "Yes, but their lives revolve around getting a man." Seen from that perspective, it is hardly the feminist frolic of fashion and feisty friendship. And of course, our whole film is obsessed with the idea of marriage. In a neat tables-turn – what Scarlett O'Hara might call giving men some of their own medicine – men are casually dehumanised. Either as sex-objects (for Samantha), or as provider (for Carrie, remarkably). The other two males (those stabled by Miranda and Charlotte) are insignificant and weak. Carrie's man is famously not given a name (recall how Célestine was reduced to an object in Buñuel's Diary of a Chambermaid by the old man who simply called her 'what he called all the maids'). Carrie is a successful author yet, when contemplating a new flat with her man, she lets him pick up the bill, "like he was picking up the check for coffee." The romantic dénouement is based on what would, without the happy Hollywood coincidences, be deemed stalking in real life.

The best part for me was seeing Jennifer Hudson, who plays Carrie's assistant Louise. Hudson also contributes a fine song for the film which adequately expresses the theme of, "Good men are like designer labels and it's hard to spot the knock-offs." Hudson is a fine actress in her own right, not just a one hit wonder who got an Oscar for Dreamgirls after failing to win American Idol. She exudes screen charisma. Every expression, every intonation, was a joy to behold. Although the clip from Meet Me in St Louis rather reminded me of what a really good movie looks like, Sex and the City, however enjoyable, isn't one. It's a remarkably pleasant way of spending two and a half hours, but the performances are largely pedestrian. Unlike Devil Wears Prada, it's about labels, not an appreciation of the design behind them. By being successfully chic and delightfully superficial, the characters distract us from the wedding bells goal and the way their lives really stereotype them. We never learn much about their work, or about them as people independent of a man's penis. It provides the dual fantasy of apparently liberated woman while retaining the old penchant for ball and chain.

"I want people leaving the movie theater feeling, 'all right, great, that was a lot!'" King says. "That was drinks, appetizer, main course, and dessert, dessert, dessert!" And, like most desserts, Sex and the City is ninety per cent sugar.

The queens of NYC are back in spectacular fashion. Is it Oscar worthy? No, but it doesn't need to be. The storyline is on brand for the emotional chaos that was the series, I would expect nothing less. I love the display of friendship and kindness that the women show to each other in this film.

I am a big fan of the show. I am one of those people who have seen every episode at least 4 times, and some of them around 10 times. Even so, I still watch the reruns, and I was really looking forward to the movie.

So, it is really upsetting that I have to give it such a bad review. I went to see it with the best of intentions. I really wanted to love it. Unfortunately the movie has nothing to do with the wittiness and character of the series. Even putting aside the wooden and/or exaggerated acting, you fail to recognize the characters who where transformed into caricatures, pathetic versions of themselves.

There were very very few lines that gave a glimpse of the old clever dialog, and they all got lost in a mass of cheesy lines about love and friendship that you even rarely anymore encounter in the corniest of Hollywood's chick flicks, and toiler humor that you only expect from movies like Harold and Kumar. OK, maybe the comparison to Harold and Kumar is a little unfair, but really I had never expected Sex and the City to rely on fart jokes for comic relief.

People comment that those who rate this movie badly are either men, or just not fans of the show. From my perspective the fans of the show should be the ones most disappointed by the travesty that was this film.

We grew to love the show because of its honesty towards sexual issues, its shocking but clever dialog, and its characters who, however unreal with their designer obsessions, uncontrollable spending and lack of real jobs, remained true to their personas regarding sex, relationships, commitment, independence.

The show was about sex. The movie is about love, and treats the subject from the weakest, corniest and most disappointing standpoint.

This movie is a fake Fendi. Dropping 15 designer names in one sentence, showing bulging men's underpants and orgasming at the sight of huge closets, Sex and the City does not make.

As for me, I will keep watching the reruns and pretend this movie never happened.

It has been a while since I watched the original series so when the movie started I found it cute and nice seeing these characters that I liked back together again.

And there interactions at the start are the movie keep it entertaining but when you head into the plot that's where things come off the rails.

I don't understand the plot and I think that is an issue. I won't go into spoilers but it just seems so strange that they decided that this is what they would do.

I also find that this movie doesn't work as these characters have already reached their original ending if you get what I mean.

Charlotte has a baby, Carrie and Big are together, Miranda has her family and Samantha sound someone she could be with. This all happens at the end of the show because that is the end of the story for these characters. This can sometimes seem forced for lack of a better word.

The jokes are also very 90s cheesy sitcom jokes too. But some people like that.

So I would say watch it if you are a fan of the show but be prepared to be disappointed by some decisions, I think you'll enjoy it for the most part.