Name : Roger Moore / Alias : Orlando Sentinel
If it all feels a mite perfunctory, a mite trite and a little dated (the girls haven't heard of the New Frugality?), Sex and the City still manages to be a hymn to hotness, hipness and haute couture, one its fans can happily sing along with.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : Associated Press
It's all really soapy, though, with only some smidgens of substance.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The stakes are so low that, during the girls' final madcap sprint through an outdoor market disguised in burqas, the unspeakable outcome they're trying to forestall is the possibility of having to fly home in coach.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
At two and a half hours, Sex 2 - like its predecessor - is a long sit in the shallows, the equivalent of five half-hour episodes strung together.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As tasteless as an Arabian cathouse, as worn-out as your 1998 flip-flops and as hideous as the mom jeans Carrie wears with a belly-baring gingham top, Sex and the City 2 is two of the worst movies of the year.

Name : Genevieve Koski / Alias : AV Club
Ultimately, Sex And The City serves as a glitter-laced love letter to its fans, which is really all it needs to be.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Even director Michael Patrick King, known for his sense of excess, seems to recognize that we've been down this road before, and we know where it ends.

Name : Tom Maurstad / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Like a plastic surgeon, storyteller King keeps trying to find new ways to lift and tighten his characters, but they have become garish caricatures of themselves.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
From the running time to the plot development for each character, which grows to beating-a-dead-horse lengths in at least a couple of cases, the whole thing would have been better served by holding back a little.

Name : Carrie Rickey / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Frothy as a Margarita and just as salty, Sex and the City all but mambos its way onto the screen.

Name : Lisa Bornstein / Alias : Denver Rocky Mountain News
If Sex and the City is a hit, it will be partly because it's an enjoyable and somewhat true depiction of female friendship. But grown women will also go to see it because, finally, someone made a movie for them.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
I realize that gaudy fantasy is essential to this franchise, but why does the fantasy have to be so stunted?

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
An enervated, crass and gruesomely caricatured trip to nowhere [that] seems conceived primarily to find new and more cynical ways to abuse the loyalty of its audience.

Name : Gene Seymour / Alias : Newsday
A lot different from, say, watching several SATC episodes on DVD in succession as if gobbling fudge brownies. That may be OK for the living room, but in a multiplex, you just want things to move along already.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Twelve years, one beloved HBO series, and two feature films on, the Sex and the City gals have been reduced to Bratz dolls for grown women.

Name : Amy DiLuna / Alias : New York Daily News
Though the sequel is a welcome return of the four women we know and love, it's tough not to acknowledge that if we were all friends in real life, at this point we'd probably stop taking their calls.

Name : Carrie Rickey / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Sex and the City 2 is a champagne cocktail on a runaway train - fizzy, sparkly, giddy-making, and splashing all over the place.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Amid the style, sass and sexiness is plenty of sentimentality, especially at the satisfying conclusion.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
In both its TV and movie incarnations, the empty materialism and sincere longing for love always manage to cancel each other out, leaving behind nothing but what this started out as - a sitcom.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Sex and the City: The Motion Picture (not the actual title) is a joyful wallow. And it's more: In this summer of do-overs (The Incredible Hulk, a new Batman versus a new Joker), it's what the series finale should have been.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie is just like a half-season of the series - a funny, sappy, clumsy, crude, rambunctious, argumentative, gleefully vulgar attempt to balance the fantasy of romance with the reality that the fantasy is impossible.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness. All the film lacks is a subtitle: The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe.

Name : Rick Groen / Alias : Globe and Mail
It's worse than Sex and the City 1, and that alone is a remarkable achievement.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Ebert & Roeper
Why get the band back together if you're not going to add some new songs to the greatest hits?

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Honestly, by the time they ride camels, it's Ishtar in designer gowns.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
In the end it's the fun movie it's supposed to be. Raise your cosmos in a modest toast.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Bottom line: a provocative, groundbreaking TV series that worked in 30-minute segments has been bloated and padded into nearly two and a half hours of tedium and gratuitous product placement for everything from Vuitton to a new Mercedes-Benz GLK.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The movie, scripted and directed by series veteran Michael Patrick King, caters to viewers nostalgic for the Emmy-winning show while pushing forward into feature film territory.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Somehow this well-intentioned film cannot help but turn an uncompromisingly original artist into a formula.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Though the 2 in the title implies a double shot of everything fans loved about the series, there is less.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
There is something depressingly stunted about this movie; something desperate too.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Judged by the standards of its original medium, the movie version succeeds just as well, cramming what used to take a whole season into a nearly 2 1/2 -hour marathon of men, misery and Manolos.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally, if you get my drift.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
It's an almost avant-garde adventure in aimlessness.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
When Carrie asks Big, "Am I just a bitch wife who nags you?" I could hear all the straight men in the theater - all four of us - being physically prevented from responding.

Name : Carina Chocano / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A vision of which doesn't require its characters being frozen in amber after a fairy tale ending and allows life to go on, happily and unconventionally.

Name : Jessica Bennett / Alias : Newsweek
Remember the old, boundary-breaking, taboo-toppling Sex and the City? Forget it. Neither sex nor the city plays any role in this film.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
I am not the person to review this movie. Perhaps you will enjoy a review from someone who disqualifies himself at the outset, doesn't much like most of the characters and is bored by their bubble-brained conversations.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
As Carrie might type on her laptop while giving one of her girly little shrugs, When did Sex and the City become so long and mean so little?

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Richard Roeper.com
Bad puns, fashion porn, domestic handwringing, contrived plot points, idiotic dialogue and offensive stereotypes. What's not to loathe?

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Salon.com
The show was at its best when it offered, without a great deal of extraneous examination, these glimpses into the nature of friendships between women. The movie needs more of that.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
The moment of dread. It comes for all beloved series, and in Sex and the City 2, it arrives with embarrassing suddenness.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
After staggering around a bit at the beginning it settles down and finds its groove. It's appropriately flashy, nicely naughty and wholly improbable, just as it's supposed to be.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
King and his cast seem content to put everything on autopilot and hope glamour and shopping sprees will be enough to carry them. Nothing much happens - and it takes 2.5 hours for it not to happen in.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
An insult to the memory of the cleverly written show and its celebration of friendship, it's a slap in the face for the four gal pals (often photographed at unflattering angles) and an affront to Muslims.

Name : Jessica Reaves / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Witty, effervescent and unexpectedly thoughtful, the big-screen iteration of the HBO series stands up beautifully (and somewhat miraculously) to the twin pressures of popular expectation and critical assessment.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Sex and the City: The Movie is no great shakes as a movie, but it doesn't have to be. What it does have to be is a happy revisit to a land its fans know well, and on that level it works very well.

Name : Cliff Doerksen / Alias : Chicago Reader
Thanks to writer-director Michael Patrick King, I now have a fair idea how it might feel to be stoned to death with scented candles.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
For those who'd like some substance in a movie pushing 2 1/2 hours, though, it's gratifying to report that this Sex is more than just a fan dance.

Name : Mark Bourne / Alias : Film.com
.'Yes,' she said. 'It's Star Trek for women.'.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The end product is a case of bigger not necessarily being better.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : Associated Press
It's self-indulgent, way too long and never as clever or funny as it's intended to be.

Name : Tom Maurstad / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Fans rejoice: It's good. And smart. And funny.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
The ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
This is a sequel that doesn't come close to justifying its existence.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
In this second screen incarnation of the fabulous HBO series, the satire is sagging, the irony's atrophied and the funny is flabby.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : L.A. Weekly
King fails to grasp what he once understood: When times are hard, you don't cry poverty. You step on the gas and give the audience a show.

Name : Ray Bennett / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
It's an energetic and vivacious film that will appeal to fans of punk rock worldwide and should find its place in the pantheon of great music-film biographies.

Name : Gail Pennington / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
If you're already sick of the hype and wondering whether a second Sex and the City movie was really necessary, here's a surprising answer: Yes, in fact, it was.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It's supposed to be Sex and the City. This is Sects and the Souk.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Beyond the shoes, the cosmopolitans and the disloyal men, Sex and the City has always been about the bond among women. At its best, the movie shows why that bond sticks.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The movie's initially brisk pacing slackens when the girls spend a holiday in Mexico that's long enough for them to cycle through an entire resort-wear collection.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
They're all over 40 now, and writer/director Michael Patrick King deftly balances their hard-won wisdom with the wistful dreams they still share. At the same time, there's plenty of fun to be had.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The most depressing thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it seems to justify every nasty thing said and written about the series and first feature film.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
There were a lot of very funny moments in this film. I almost cried.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
I enjoyed these characters more when they were rich, rather than obscenely rich, when their self-involvement and life crises had one foot on planet Earth - and when they weren't all gussied up like Mae West in Sextette.

Name : Bobby Hankinson / Alias : Houston Chronicle
The film is by no means a masterpiece, but it's a worthy exercise in indulgence that won't disappoint the cosmo-swilling core audience. And fans won't need to swill any cosmos to enjoy it.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A movie that taps directly back into the show's primal appeal, which is the sweet, sad, saucy delight of sharing these women's company.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Fans of Sex and the City will love the movie version.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Learning and hugging. There's lots of that here a" woman to woman and man to woman a" which satisfies the movie's fantasy fulfillment of both amity and eros.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
It's just that there's been an altitude adjustment - fewer stilettos, more flats. Ask what women want of a chick flick and one answer may be this - a pleasant reunion with cherished friends. Ask what women deserve and the answer is better.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : Village Voice
Sarah Jessica Parker is now 45 years old, and, frankly, I cannot stomach another moment of the simpering, mincing, hair-tossing, eyelash-batting little-girl shtick she's been pulling ever since she emerged.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR.org
This celebration with Carrie & Co. — very much television writ large — seems precisely the Sex and the City reunion the show's fans had hoped for.

Name : Genevieve Koski / Alias : AV Club
The movie completely unravels into a pastiche of wish-fulfillment, slapstick, and ham-handed social commentary.

Name : Rick Groen / Alias : Globe and Mail
I hate, loathe and despise - sorry to mince my words - the movie based on the TV show.

Name : Brian Lowry / Alias : Variety
For a series so steeped in romance, the eagerly awaited Sex and the City movie feels a trifle half-hearted.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Sarah Jessica Parker is now 45 years old, and, frankly, I cannot stomach another moment of the simpering, mincing, hair-tossing, eyelash-batting little-girl shtick she's been pulling ever since L.A. Story.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
An absurd joke.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
This movie provides no good reasons to revisit Sex and the City, except to fulfill fans' desires for one more for the road and add millions to Time Warner's coffers. Be careful what you wish for.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
It has no plot to speak of, little in the way of wit or intelligence, and is about 50% longer than can reasonably be justified.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
More disappointment than joyful reunion, a tedious and desperately drawn-out affair that tests your patience even as it brazenly courts (and often earns) your contempt.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
For those who do not consider themselves to be among the Sex and the City faithful, this is a painful experience, perhaps the longest 148 minutes likely to be spent in a movie theater this year. Watching grass grow is more dramatically satisfying.

Name : Roger Moore / Alias : Orlando Sentinel
It's slower and more of an eye-roller than the first film, but also a lot more about the women.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Variety
Paul Viragh's script is too bitty to hold it all together, and filigrees of technique fail to disguise the weaknesses in helmer Mat Whitecross' first solo flight.

Name : Laremy Legel / Alias : Film.com
There's so much glossy sheen to the work that it's easy to forgive the contrived "issues" that must be faced for character growth.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
As gender-segregated experiences go, SATC is preferable to, say, that idiotic beefcake epic 300. The amusing thing about SATC is that it objectifies men in much the same way that most male-oriented movies objectify women.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of Sex and the City 2 are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row.