Somehow, Diane English has managed to make the "Sex and the City" movie look like a documentary.

With her remake of George Cukor's 1939 catfight, "The Women," based on the play by Clare Boothe Luce, English has applied all the lighthearted instincts of her sitcom background and seemingly none of the insights of the source material.

"The Women" was intended as a satire of society mavens and their frivolous lives; in directing for the first time and writing the script, the "Murphy Brown" creator has turned it into a celebration.

Sure, it has an all-female cast of solid actresses, as did the original (though perhaps not quite the stellar collection that included Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell). But Cukor's tone and timing are missing: It's as if English has included all the boutiques but none of the bite.

Meg Ryan does her patented cutesy thing in the Shearer role as Mary Haines, a wealthy Connecticut wife and mother who learns that her husband is having an affair. The other woman? Still the perfume girl at the Saks Fifth Avenue cosmetics counter, the role that helped catapult Crawford to fame, played here with cartoony va-va-voominess by Eva Mendes.

Mary's friends, including magazine editor Sylvie Fowler (Annette Bening), rally around her in her time of need, offering snappy one-liners and broad facial expressions.

Basically, their support consists of that great female pick-me-up, shopping. There are also lunches and dinners in which we must sit and watch the characters rehashing events we've already seen on screen, which is about as compelling as it sounds.

- By Christy Lemire / Associated Press

The Women

Rating: 1 and a half stars (out of four)

Cast: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, Candice Bergen.

Running time: 114 minutes.

Rated: PG-13; sex-related material, language, some drug use and brief smoking.