Sex And The City is, quite literally, a film like no other. Has there ever been a film that has created such anticipation among the female audience? Buzz, hype and pre-release excitement is usually the domain of male-driven blockbusters like Indiana Jones and Iron Man, so it's very refreshing to see the estrogen set getting fired up for a change. Their hopes and dreams are likely to be well and truly met with Sex And The City, which succeeds - at least for its primary audience - because it is, pure and simple, merely an extension of the much loved television show. Debut big screen director Michael Patrick King (one of the show's driving forces) does absolutely nothing to make this experience even remotely "cinematic", or any different from its small screen incarnation. The film's structure even makes it feel like a truncated seventh series of the show, complete with roughly half-hour story blocks, A/B plotting strands and even "guest stars", who hang around for a while and then leave. It's a strange, almost disconnecting experience, and makes you wonder if they should have just gone all out and done another full series of Sex And The City for TV instead.

Plot and character wise, nothing much has changed: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still self-absorbed and writing for Vogue; Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is still whining about living in Brooklyn with Steve (David Eigenberg) and their young son; Charlotte (Kristen Davis) is still cuter-than-a-button, and happily ensconced with nice guy husband Harry (Evan Handler) and their adopted daughter; and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is still very, very funny and hot-to-trot, though she's now living in LA to nurture the career of superstar boyfriend Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis). The major wrinkles occur when Carrie and John James Prescott aka Mr. Big (Chris Noth) decide to tie the knot, which soon throws a spanner into the works.

While it's funny, entertaining and meets expectations, the chop-change structure of Sex And The City pulls against the sense of cohesion essential for a tight cinematic experience, and at 148 minutes, it does drag. The only thing that's been slightly amped up for the big screen is the show's rampant materialism, and the movie gorges itself on sparkly images of shoes, dresses and handbags, while there's one nauseating scene that portrays a walk-in closet as a New York gal's version of the gates of heaven. This sickening obsession with all things consumerist and material reaches its end-point when Carrie gets a black personal assistant (played by Oscar winner - hilarious, isn't it? - Jennifer Hudson), who looks a little too much like a slave for comfort. There's so much gloss here that it's almost blinding, but there's also a lot of grist for the tough-relationship-issues-mill that was the series' real strongpoint. When it neglects the fizz in favour of the grit (or at least the kind of grit acceptable for Sex And The City), this femme phenomenon hits the spot.