THE WOMEN (PG) 
Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Benning
Directed by Diane English

The most striking thing about this update is just how unfunny it has become. A long-time pet-project from the Murphy Brown scribe, it finally found favour on the coattails of Sex In The City. And if you thought that was a slog, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Mary finds herself on the curly end of an affair when her manicurist lets slip that Crystal from Perfume is seeing a married man… Friends rally as divorce papers are written up but things go awry when her best friend inadvertently betrays her to tabloid papers.

Boasting an A-List who’s who – Ryan, Benning, Eva Mendes, CarrieFisher, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen – the film is meant to be a tits-out celebration of girl-power. Yet rather than form a post-feminist critique, English seeks a comic hug-a-thon. Wit withers into a horror show as each joke falls lemming-like to die a miserable death on the set floor.

Not that we’re given any particular reason to care, but what did they do to deserve such disdain? A woefully inert exercise in celebrity casting, The Women doesn’t even have the good grace to crash spectacularly, preferring simply to run the curb as it runs out of gas.

- Colin Fraser