When Michael Patrick King agreed to transfer the beloved HBO series Sex and the City—which he shepherded though its fourth, fifth and final seasons—to the big screen, there were two ways he could have approached the assignment. The first would have been to take the show's iconic heroines, sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), uptight lawyer Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), naïve homemaker Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) and sexually voracious publicist Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), out of their comfy confines in New York and plop them down in a place where they can experience new challenges and fresh faces. The second would have been to make a feature-length episode of the series only on a grand scale—bigger costumes, bigger locations, bigger squabbles, bigger running time, bigger everything.

Ultimately, King chose the latter approach and while that has already pissed off a lot of critics, who have spewed vitriol all over the movie for being too long and too indulgent, his choice will probably thrill the show's sizeable fanbase. Truth be told, all that these folks really want from a Sex and the City movie is the same thing, only on the big-screen. And the movie obliges in grand style. From my vantage point, Sex and the City aspires to be nothing less than the summer blockbuster of chick flicks—a film just as superficial and glossy as the dozens of comic-book adaptations and mindless action movies that clutter up theaters throughout the months of June, July and August. Only in this case, instead of an elaborate action sequence, we get an elaborate wedding scene and instead of gleaming superhero costumes, we get gorgeous, high-end fashions. Just to be clear, this doesn’t automatically excuse the movie's flaws in my eyes. It is much too long and it is incredibly indulgent. But the same thing can be said about any number of blockbusters—like, say, Transformers or Miami Vice—that earned a passing grade from the same (mostly male) critics who have beaten up on this film.

Sex and the City: Le Film (as its known in France) opens three years after the series finale, but despite the passage in time, not much has changed in the lives of our main characters. Carrie and Big are still happily co-existing in unwedded bliss, Charlotte and Harry are raising their adopted daughter in their lovely Park Avenue apartment, Miranda and Steve are typical Park Slope parents and Samantha is living it up in La-La Land with her boy toy-turned-TV star Smith Jerrod. But this peaceful existence is soon upended, first by Carrie and Big's sudden decision to get married. Not long after this announcement, Steve reveals that he cheated on Miranda during a lengthy dry spell in their sex life, leading her to move out and warn Big on the night of the rehearsal dinner that he and Carrie are "crazy to get married." Her offhand comment disturbs the already nervous groom leading to a seismic emotional meltdown that torpedoes the planned wedding. Reeling from the fallout, Carrie hires a new assistant (Jennifer Hudson) to help her get her professional life back together and, in the process, teach her about the importance of love…or something like that. Meanwhile, Charlotte learns that, after years of trying, she's finally pregnant and Samantha comes to the slow realization that couplehood just isn't for her.

If all of these plots sound familiar, that's because we saw variations of them in the series and, as I said, the movie is essentially a feature-length version of a typical Sex and the City episode. Actually, it's a feature-length version of a whole season's worth of Sex and the City episodes. This is King's first attempt at writing a movie script and it shows. The movie unfolds in 30-minute chunks and, if you know the series well enough, you can tell exactly where he would have had the end credits roll after each half-hour. Were he a more disciplined filmmaker, he could have easily gotten this 142-minute behemoth down to a more manageable running time. For starters, he could have focused the narrative entirely around Carrie and Big, significantly paring down the other women's storylines. That may not have pleased the other actresses, but it would have made for a more consistent, less rambling film. (Then again, seeing as how Miranda is probably my favorite character, I would have hated seeing less for the brilliant Cynthia Nixon to do.)

After that, he could have lopped Jennifer Hudson out of the film entirely, thus shaving a good twenty minutes off the final product. Not only is Hudson's performance awkward and amateurish (wonder if the Academy regrets giving her that Oscar now?), but her character is entirely superfluous, not to mention—as some critics have correctly pointed out—borderline racist.

But if King's screenplay falls short, the four actresses and the city itself helps keep Sex and the City afloat. By this point, Parker, Cattrall, Davis and Nixon understand their characters in and out and play off each other with a skill that can only come with years of familiarity. All of them get at least one moment to show off their comic, as well as dramatic, chops, although King does force them into some situations that are more humiliating than amusing. (Most notably Charlotte's regrettable case of Montezuma's Revenge during a Mexican getaway.) The writer/director does deserve credit for making excellent use of Manhattan—shot largely on the streets and in the boutiques and restaurants of New York's ritziest borough, the movie bestows a glamour on the city that hasn't been seen since…well, since Sex and the City went off the air. Neither a classic for all time nor a "Taliban recruitment film" (as one hyperbolic online review has dubbed it), the Sex and the City movie is the very definition of a decent summer blockbuster—entertaining and entirely disposable.