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Two years since Carrie and Big got married, and all is not quite right in the upper west side apartment that they call home. All Big wants to do is curl up in front of the TV and order in (Carrie doesn’t cook). Mrs Parker, on the other hand, still yearns for evenings of Manhattan glitz and glamour. He wants to unwind. She wants sparkle.

And what of her girlfriends? Charlotte is struggling to cope with a daughter who cries all day long and a nanny who doesn’t wear a bra… Miranda is stuck with a sexist boss and quits… and Samantha is popping vitamins to forestall the menopause.

More confidently than the first film (which isn’t saying much), the sequel recreates the mixture of sexiness, sass and straight talk that made the HBO series such a touchstone for a generation of women. Part of the price is that this movie sometimes feels like a ridiculously over-extended TV special, but my hunch is that the fans won’t mind that. More problematic is that these women really seem to have it all by now, and the anxieties of four superficial shopaholics have begun to pall.

Written and directed by Michael Patrick King, again, it begins with a self-indulgently OTT gay wedding, complete with swans and a guest spot for Liza Minnelli (!). It’s not a promising start, though it does suggest that what King would really like do is recreate the whole shebang as a camp Broadway musical. (Later our quartet get together for a karaoke rendition of, well, wait and see.)

The longest wedding scene since The Deer Hunter, this eye-rolling sequence will probably send any recalcitrant male dates back out to the concession stand, or possibly the auditorium next door in search of better prospects, but it does introduce one of the movie’s Talking Points. To wit: Marriage – an oppressive and outmoded tradition, or, you know, a sacred vow between soulmates…

This not particularly revolutionary theme gets a thoroughly exotic work-out when Samantha scores four first-class tickets for an all-expenses-paid stay in Abu Dhabi at the invitation of a local sheik. At first the movie seems to be collapsing into a gaga advertisement for the lap of luxury in the “new Middle East”, but in fairness it does eventually confront the paradox of these emancipated clothes horses at play in a conservative Muslim society, even if the treatment is as shallow as a bird bath. You won’t soon forget Samantha freaking out in the souk, screaming her right to screw as condoms to flutter to the ground.

Personally, I still can’t understand why Sex and the City devotes so much of its focus to Carrie, a ditz who only seems interested in love, clothes and shoes – not necessarily in that order – but if those happen to be of interest to you too, then the film’s two-hour-plus fashion parade should suffice.

With its excruciating innuendos – “Lawrence of my labia” anyone? – arch performances and square, clunky cutting, this sequel is no artistic triumph (I’ll take Ishtar, any day), but there are a couple of scenes – featuring the bland and conventional Charlotte, funnily enough – that do remind us that these women are friends, and have been for a long time – an attribute that’s rare and precious in any Hollywood flick.