See it or Skip it: The Women

After years of largely abandoning the “Chick Flick,” this summer Hollywood took a page from the Spice Girls and tried to imbue their offerings with Girl Power. Their sad, misguided efforts produced some of the most cloying, least-realistic portrayals of women ever seen on screen.

Meryl Streep was made to prance around Greece like an adolescent idiot in Mamma Mia!, the Sex and the City movie was so whiney and ill-conceived, it decimated the memory of a beloved series and now The Women arrives, tired, dated and contrived. It’s hard to believe it’s based on a biting, witty film classic.

Meg Ryan, botoxed and collagened to within an inch of her life, stars as a woman dealing with the fall out of her husband’s affair assisted by her gaggle of girlfriends: horrendously over the top Debra Messing; Annette Benning, who does her mighty best to raise the material she’s saddled with; and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who apparently believes being a lesbian means sitting with your legs spread and an arm over the back of a chair. The foursome is entirely unbelievable as a group of friends, lacking any chemistry or connection, but we’re still tortured by their loathsome, forced, shrill, “look at how much fun we’re supposed to be having” antics.

Writer-director Diane English, once so brilliant and savvy as the mind behind Murphy Brown, keeps the film’s original plot intact, borrows dialogue heavily and maintains the conceit of not having even one man on screen…but, 75 years later, none of it makes sense. This “updated” version is a clunky, retro mess that defiles its roots and is chockful of characters who are unredeemable. That ain't Girl Power.

Skip it.