Whenever you bring a popular TV series to the big screen, you face inevitable questions – will the material play outside the already dedicated fan base? Does familiarity breed financial rewards, or does contempt expose the limited interests involved. This is the dilemma that faces the four-years-in-the-making Sex and the City: The Movie. While writer/director Michael Patrick King is no longer simply playing to the feverish fanatics who made the series a pay cable success, he does nothing to broaden the scope – or potential appeal – of this bit of now tired pseudo-Cinderella shallowness.

Columnist/author Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) prepares to move in with her long-time beau Mr Big (Chris Noth) as her three fabulous friends face their own unique issues. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), after five years in California with her soap actor toy boy (Jason Lewis), is getting antsy for her old stomping grounds... and sexual ways. Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) husband Steve (David Eigenberg) has been feeling unloved, and his actions drive a wedge into their marriage. And Charlotte (Kristin Davis) loves being a wife and mother. When a suddenly planned wedding goes awry, Carrie hires Manhattan newbie Louise (Jennifer Hudson) to help sort out her life. Turns out, it’s harder to find love than any one of these modern gals previously imagined.

Sex and the City, both the show and now this new celluloid sampling, is a lazy Absolutely Fabulous minus the wit and wicked social commentary, a proto-female wish fulfillment turned into an anti-male, post-Cosmo cult. The TV show offers life as a series of sexual encounters (without consequences), easily accessible cupidity, and unrealistic fashion statements. If it wasn’t so popular, people would be protesting against it, grassroots campaigns calling for answers for the many mindless mixed messages it sends. The lengthy movie version is no clearer: it is an equally unfathomable combination of suds and snark that can’t quite figure out if it’s a tearjerker, a knee-slapper, or an incredibly cynical slam at all women everywhere.

Here’s arguing for the third option. In our supposedly successful writer, Carry Bradshaw offers a portrait of interpersonal selfishness hard to grasp. She doesn’t act like a 40-year-old. Instead, her mind seems stuck in that horribly unattractive phase of middle school ‘me, me, me,’ when every adolescent imagines the universe conspires to hinder their entitled bliss. The rationales she uses to excuse her decisions sound like diary entries, not dramatic motivations. The skeletal Sarah Jessica Parker plays the most unattractive traits ever foisted (unfairly) on a gender. Of course, US$500 shoes can soothe even the most fractured psyche.

Her cast mates are equally problematic. There’s no doubting that Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda is a mess, but do we have to be reminded of her harried professional status every 30 seconds? Kristin Davis’s Charlotte is a cipher, rendered inert by her fairytale life and equally grim outlook. Yet the most unlikely icon remains Kim Cattrall’s Samantha. No matter how you describe it – free-spirited businesswoman, open-minded cougar – she’s a 50-year-old whore who would be derided by feminists if she were a guy. Imagine, a subplot centred on a sexually unhinged bimbo who can’t settle down and commit to one partner because he is too focused on himself and his below-the-belt needs. One can just hear the harangue.

Still, Sex and the City wears its obvious purpose on every overpriced designer sleeve it features. Clearly the cast felt cheated by HBO’s residual policy and pledged to milk this mindless excess for all the pay cheques they could collect. The supporting players, included Noth, Eigenberg, and Lewis, are left holding pointless conversations with symbols who only champion their own ill-advised grrrl power. Fans will definitely froth over the chance to see these TV pals parading around the streets of the Big Apple once again. Outside that demo, this resonates as ridiculous and regressive.

Bill Gibron