Hot sensation Meg Ryan vehicle like 'Sex in the City

Hot sensation Meg Ryan vehicle like 'Sex in the City

The Women" is "Sex and the City" without the sex, without the bitchy edge. That's not to say it isn't the chickier of the two "chick pictures," with better actors trying their hand at the same sitcom-polished sort of patter. But the "good girls" of "The Women" feel a little old-fashioned next to the bad girls of SATC, understandable since "Women" is based on a 1930s Clare Booth Luce play and 1939 film.

After years of being the most talked-about remake in Hollywood, with many an actress (Julia Roberts, for one) trying to get it on the screen, "The Women" returns as a Meg Ryan production and Meg Ryan vehicle, a somewhat updated take on girl bonding and the generational wars that "the younger, other woman" can stir up in a marriage or in the workplace.

Ryan is Mary, queen bee of her little circle of ladies who luncheon. She's the sometime clothing designer who married well and juggles family, charities and work and "has it all." Or so she thinks.

But gal pal Sylvie (Annette Bening), the magazine editor, gets a tip from a chatty manicurist at Saks. A "perfume girl" in the Manhattan store is having an affair with a married man. And he's Mary's husband.

Much kvetching ensues, as Sylvie tells the ever-pregnant Edith (Debra Messing) and lesbian writer friend Miriam (Jada Pinkett Smith). Should they tell? Should they keep Mary from finding out? That'll never work.

"Murphy Brown" vet Diane English adapted and directed "The Women," and she gives her sitcom-vet supporting