The Gold Digger’s Credo.

High Maintenance Harridans.

Four ugly women bitch and moan about men. The End.

Nauseating and irrelevant to men and people with more than half a functioning brain, SEX AND THE CITY THE MOVIE is a temple to the spoiled-hideous First World upper class fem-empowered sub culture. Since its inception as a TV series in 1998 (created by Darren Star) SEX AND THE CITY has become the role model for entitled harridans the world over. Only reason this institution has nominal cred with me at all is because Prince used it in his song Kiss, in live performances updating the line, “You don’t have to watch Dynasty to have an attitude…” to “You don’t have to watch Sex & The City…”

Fans of the television series need not be worried – the hauteur and bitching levels are still higher than the Chrysler Building, as we follow the tiresome, elitist girl-adventures of four New York City dregs so ugly on the inside that they must garb themselves on the outside with the latest “label” couture hoping no one will notice their psychological deformities. It doesn’t work.

There’s frigid, giraffe-necked Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), bug-eyed crone Charlotte (Kristin Davis), botoxed, siliconed MILF Samantha (Kim Cattrall), and horse-faced yuppie snob Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker, wearing enough black mascara to kill a mule-deer).

Carrie’s male companion Mr. Big (resolute Chris Noth) buys them an apartment to co-habit, but Carrie, on the prompting of her gold-digging friends, won’t let Big have his name solely as owner – so badgers for marriage. I know: world-shaking plot events, right? Big reneges on the wedding – on the wedding day. Funniest part of the movie. Don’t know why Carrie takes it like the sinking of the Titanic.

Meanwhile Miranda’s boyfriend Steve (David Eigenberg) confesses to an affair. And in this chick-centric universe, the fact that Miranda has not given Steve sex for six months doesn’t enter the equation at all, and she acts surprised, hurt and outraged. And all her pompous, self-righteous tart friends exclaim, “I can’t believe it!” Six months. No sex. I think it’s safe to say every single man in the audience that was dragged pussy-whipped and screaming to this movie was in Steve’s corner on that one.

Meanwhile, playgirl Samantha is bored of her upscale male model boyfriend as her twat itches for the Euro playboy neighbor.

And though Charlotte is happily married, she can’t get pregnant. Boo hoo!

There’s even the token empowered fat black chick to open out more demographic: Jennifer Hudson with her butt the size of a small rhino.

Mmm, every woman’s fantasy: warm home, big man, expensive art, cozy bed, rich tapestries, good book, deep love… until they get it. Then they want something ELSE… or, uh, maybe not. Or maybe yes? Or maybe maybe? Who knows? Who gives a fuck?

If they are IN a relationship, they bitch; if they are OUT of a relationship, they bitch. If they ARE married, they bitch; if they are NOT married, they bitch; if they are GETTING married, they bitch. If their man DOESN’T buy them gifts, they bitch; if he DOES buy gifts, they bitch about empowerment being usurped from them; if the gift is something they DON’T want, they bitch; if it’s something they DO want, they bitch. And then they wonder why they shouldn’t be allowed to vote or drive.

Production value is excellent – after all, written and directed by a gay guy, Michael Patrick King – but no matter how much makeup these trollops slather over those wrinkled mugs, they look old and tired and worn out. They are. Like the show.

You don’t have to be a dumb chick or a homosexual man to enjoy SEX AND THE CITY. But it helps.

END

Club Med(iocre).

“Holy shit – this looks like a screensaver!”

That’s the funniest laugh-out-loud line in COUPLES RETREAT, delivered by Jon Favreau when the cast arrive at their paradise resort – but it also describes the energy level of this dull excursion into the high maintenance of couplehood.

Three couples (Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman, Jon Favreau and SEX AND THE CITY’s Kristin Davis, and Faizon Love and Kali Hawk) are cajoled into attending a bargain-rate couples retreat by couple-in-distress Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell.

Though their getaway promises raging activities and paradisiacal locations, the brochure doesn’t mention that counseling is mandatory. So now we too have to sit through couples counseling (which could have been worthwhile, considering Ken Jeong and John Michael Higgins were two counselors, but whose funniest bits were all transferred to the Deleted Scenes). And even those couples who don’t need advice are driven further apart through miscommunication and counselor psychojargon. I’m sure the feeling of nothingness we ended up with after these sessions was not the filmmakers’ original intention.

Jean Reno is head guru, overqualified to be in this demeaning role, and Temuera Morrison is also sadly miscast here as a guy who simply bangs a gong – literally. Honorable mention to Carlos Ponce as a yoga instructor who gets away with dry humping the wide-thighed ladies in full ankle-behind-ear positions, with more suggestiveness than is usually allowed in PG-13 bore-fests. But I guess all the MPAA censors were asleep by now and didn’t even witness this scene. “Boom…”

Film loses us completely when the cast have to disrobe and these women who are reputedly 9s and 10s pretend with all their acting ability (which isn’t much) that they’re embarrassed for being “out of shape.” Shyeh royt! The selling point of this movie is the perfection of Malin Akerman’s and Kristen Bell’s flat bellies, from which every man in the audience fantasizes eating strawberries and licking the whipped cream off. Both of them supposedly have two kids each, yet not a vestigial stretchmark between them. Who are they kidding with the fake self-effacing? I don’t even get this scene: Why are any of these inshape people so shy about getting down to their bikinis on a goddam beach?! (Faizon is admittedly a fatty, but the gag is that he’s wearing no undies. Coincidence then, that at the exact point the filmmakers stoop to pulling down a fat man’s pants with an undesired angle on his cream-cheesed buttocks, the film gets lost up its own arse…)

Nice to see Favreau in another meaty role with Vaughn, both shooting their mouths at each other, with Bateman smarming his lines in sideways. Funniest scene is undoubtedly Favreau’s masturbation interruptus – just the way he pulled the front of his t-shirt over the back of his head will kill men who have done the same thing out of sheer bone laziness (or should that be ‘boner-laziness’?).

When a perfect 9 tries to be funny about anything, the absolute last thing I’m thinking about is how well she’s delivering the joke. That’s the problem with COUPLES RETREAT – too many sexy chicks trying to deliver jokes – which is simultaneously the drawcard for its wanky audience. Men can innocently claim being dragged to this movie by their girlfriends and then have a nice tittygawk at the 8s, 9s and 10s that populate the female roles and extras in bikinis.

After nothing continues to happen past the point of us caring whether anything is ever going to happen, everyone reconciles with their spouses. The End.

Guys, don’t forget to laugh at the chicks trying to make jokes or you’ll never get away with all that tittygawking.

END

Ferris Bueller’s Slay Off.

DECK THE HALLS is about selfishness, envy, assault, infantile bickering and malice aforethought. That’s right – it’s about Christmas.

Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito), in trying to alleviate his self-esteem issues, decides to light up his house so brightly it can be seen from space. Luckily, it’s Christmas, when snideness and unbridled, irrational spending are rife in suburban middle America, so Buddy buys enough Christmas tree lights to festoon his house and piss off his anal neighbor, Steve (Matthew Broderick).

Steve used to be the “Christmas guy” in town before Buddy moved onto the block, so – being Christmas, when competitiveness and backbiting are in season – he decides to reclaim his crown by attempting to out-Christmas Buddy.

Idiot-fest ensues, involving sub-standard comedic effort put into ice-skating races, chopping down trees, dumb-hot-chick jokes, noise pollution, cross-dressing cops and crimes that would warrant jail time anywhere in the world except in a Christmas movie.

If “being seen from space” is Buddy’s objective, and cost is obviously no object, why not 2000W Lycian spotlights blaring upwards, instead of 5W Christmas bulbs?

Insipid Kristin Davis (that insipid chick from SEX AND THE CITY) finds herself married to the real life husband of her pal from SEX AND THE CITY, Sarah Jessica Parker, making the reasons for her hesitancy to get intimate with Broderick quite obvious, though nicely adding to her real life sheen of insipidity.

After complaining to Parker’s husband that the spirit of Christmas is found in little unplanned moments (“having French fries and chocolate milk on the kitchen floor with your dad”), and complaining that he was too meticulous trying to plan out everything, in a stupid irony only allowable in a Christmas movie, she is won back by Steve and Buddy teaming up and meticulously planning a lighted pathway and a giant dinner.

If that doesn’t make your flesh crawl, just wait for the rendition of Oh Holy Night by the town collective when the lights fail. And then cheer in piggish joy when the lights come on again and Buddy’s house is, in fact, seen from space, despite every law of physics that would state otherwise.

Written by three first-time TV writers who think we’re as idiotic as they are, and directed by John Whitesell (MALIBU’S MOST WANTED, 2003) like an insult to retarded people, DECK THE HALLS is one of those skin-rashing elements of Christmas that make us thankful it only comes once a year.

END