Sex and the City

A little Botox goes a long way in "Sex and the City", but a little decent writing would have gone even further. A dumpy big-screen makeover that the much-adored small-screen delight, the film was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, one of the bright lights and minds of the original series based on Candace Bushnell's newspaper columns and subsequent book. Once again, Sarah Jessica Parker has in dizziness high heels of Carrie Bradshaw, that postmodern Lorelei Lee - a hardly working New York writer with a passion for men and Manolos - but this time it is a terrible tumble.

Fans of the show were accustomed to Carrie's falls, metaphoric and literal (as in her spectacularly horrible trip during her catwalk promenade), they were crucial to the attractiveness of the Fair, softening its hard, brittle edges. Then in her mid-30-year-olds, Carrie was one of New York on the fearless zipless It Girls, able to jump high in a men Batting bound, without a single mascaraed eyelash, but as the show on the opening of Nifty Credit sequence reminded you, episode after episode, she was not about to muck on her tutu. Their vulnerability - and their girlfriends - bad was the secret of the show, the glue holding together the froufrou, the lunches, which is absolutely fantastic and terrible clothes and everything that muscly man bait.

The froufrou and the lunches are back, as that type, the three friends Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), all the tricks, with their customary accessories (men, children, handbags ). Also back and in and out of Carrie's bed is Mr. Big (Chris North), the longtime lover and habitual heartbreaker with whom she (Hallelujah) reunited during the show, the bitter and sweet finale four years ago. Written by Mr. King, that episode opened with Carrie wandering Paris in a funk and then into the bliss of stumbling, which is literally on the ground with Big. At once melancholic and defiantly hope, it was the kind of rueful happy ending that does not choke on your own tears.

"Sex and the City", the television goods for six seasons, no small thing in the annals of pop culture. That would have been enough or at least much for all concerned, but Ms. Parker seems to have looked on screen, well on a project that had begun to settle in 2004, only to fall apart over money and Ms. Cattrall's reluctance to increase . I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the film that she and Mr. King has agreed with the pits, a vulgar, shrill, very flat - and in 2 hours and 22 minutes swollen, excessively -- addendum to a show, which over the years evolved and expanded in surprising ways.

There are no surprises in the film, at least not well. About the opening, the peas are in their designer pods, from Carrie and Big cooing in his New York digs Swank to Samantha and her boy toy, Smith (Jason Lewis), the sun in Los Angeles a sea bass. Charlotte and her husband Harry (Evan Handler), are nesting in Manhattan; Miranda and her husband, Steve (David Berg own), are bunking in Brooklyn. Everything is in this carefree world until Big casually asks Carrie if she would marry, a question that to the usual lunch postmortem (oh my gawd, he proposed) and then the usual rom-com clothing montage and a staggering number of product placement. (Louis-Vuitton-Co-Stars.)

Somehow it is sad south. Carrie Big Time is abandoned, and they lick their wounds after Mexico way, accompanied by her amazingly accessible gal pals. Jokes about Montezuma's Revenge (really), along with hard laughter and free-flowing tears and yet more clothes (and clothing montages) and jokes and jokes, most of them flatter than Carrie's Steely Six-Pack. Unlike the show, where the men, sometimes from the sidelines with lines of actual dialogue, the male characters in the movie stand idly by, either smiling or stripping, reduced to playing sock puppets in Punch-free Judy and Judy ( times two) show. I am in favor of the female gaze, but Gee, it's also nice to talk - and listen - to men as well.

I think size does matter after all, albeit not in a way that the sex-addled Samantha might assume. On television and in tasty 30-minute files, which show "Sex and the City" to entertain and inspire with sometimes self-consciously glib morality stories about love and longing in the modern world. Everything good scaled on the television of the modest dimensions, from Ms. Parker's cubist face Patricia Field's costumes. Crazy mad and sometimes unflattering, the clothes, immediately caught the eye, directing your attention to the Itty-Bitty figures, exactly what they are supposed to do. But these same loud outfits, mugging faces and Picayune dramas just do not translate when blown up on a screen, all that small-screen stuff seem even Punic.

There was something seductive about the bubble that the world show that in 1998, in the fantasy that all you needed to make them through the rough patches were good friends and Throwdown heels. It was a beautiful lie, as the show in its slightly melancholic return in the wake of 11 September. Back in Season 3 Carrie asked, "Are we always wiser or just older?" The ideal is, of course, to do both. There is something depressingly stunted about this movie, something to desperately. It is not that Carrie has older or overly familiar. To apply in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower fixated on her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this IT-Girl has totally Ick.

"Sex and the City" is Rated R (under 17 years must be parents or adult guardian). Sex in the City.

Sex and the City

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Written and directed by Michael Patrick King, Director of Photography, John Thomas, edited by Michael Berenbaum, music by Aaron Zigman, Production designer, Jeremy Conway, produced by Mr. King, Sarah Jessica Parker, Darren Star and John Melfi, from New Line Cinema. Duration: 2 hours 22 minutes.

WITH: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), Kristin Davis (Charlotte York), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), David Berg Own (Steve Brady), Evan Handler (Harry), Jason Lewis (Smith Jerrod) , Lynn Cohen (Magda), Mario Cantone (Anthony Marentino), Willie Garson (Stanford Blatch), Jennifer Hudson