Jamie passion and passionfruit!

Not a lot can be said in favour of this updated and revamped version of a 1939 film about a group of women forging their lives in New York.  The new film is a clichéd package of messages about female empowerment, all very unreal given the wealth of the women and their ability to get out of situations that their weak and caddish menfolk have created.  The messages are fine – it is just that they seem so forced and unauthentic.  Then there are the cipher characters seemingly put there to make up the quota – Debra Messing as the future mum who gets an operatic birth scene at the end and Jada Pinkett as a lesbian. What for?

Annette Bening shines as ever, Meg Ryan is an every woman with no special mark, Candice Bergen has some good lines, Cloris Leachman, Carrie Fisher and Bette Midler all appear and give us a moment to smile but on the whole this is a lemon.

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