Starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Kim Cattrall. Written and directed by Michael Patrick King. (18A) 148 min. Opens May 30.
Many marriages don’t last as long as this movie. At least then you get wedding presents, too. No such rewards — not even a complimentary cosmopolitan — await the viewers who get to the end of Sex and the City, the long-anticipated big-screen debut/reunion of the ladies of HBO’s demographic-defining series, which originally shut down for business in 2004. Written and directed by long-time show vet Michael Patrick King, the film is an ungainly, tedious example of brand extension run amok. Padding out an episode’s worth of activity with two extra hours’ worth of product shots and repartee as flat as last night’s Veuve Clicquot, it may strain the patience of even the most ardent devotees.
It needn’t have been so dire. Two summers ago, The Devil Wears Prada recycled the S&TC formula with snappy results. But this endeavour continually stumbles over its own Manolo Blahniks. The individual storylines — Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) get burned by their men, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) gets a dog and gets bored, and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) just gets the runs — are too meagre and misconceived to give the film any momentum. That the musical score is at its swooniest during the reveals of a new closet and a Louis Vuitton bag suggests that Sex and the City’s primary purpose is to fuel fantasies of conspicuous consumption, but the best episodes had more sass, more panache, more wisdom and far more ruthless pacing than this unfashionable disaster.