From left, Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are reunited for Sex and the City 2. (Craig Blankenhorn/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Sex and the City 2 begins on a high note, with a breezy sequence in which franchise heroine Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) flashes back to the 1980s, when she was still sporting a bad perm and Madonna garb, and just getting to know the three women that would become her BFFs.

There's nothing in Sex and the City 2 that warrants its sludgy two-and-a-half hour running time - especially since the film is only interested in jetting the women off to Abu Dhabi.

Watching Carrie extol the virtues of her gal pals in voiceover, it becomes apparent how much ground the HBO series covered in its triumphant six-season run. We're reminded that Carrie, Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) weren't always larger than life. They began as independent, smart women attempting to navigate the dating jungle of New York, and as the series charted their very real ups and downs, fans came to love them with all of the devotion expressed in this opener.

Writer-director Michael Patrick King maintains this fresh, fizzy energy for a good half hour of Sex and the City 2, which revisits the now-accomplished fashionistas, as they don gowns in time for Stanford and Anthony's big, fabulous gay wedding. It's a deliciously over-the-top spectacle, complete with white swans, an all-male chorus and Liza Minnelli, who stops by to sing a rousing rendition of Beyoncé's Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It). But as the camera zooms in for a close-up of Minnelli's waxen features, her face serves as foreshadowing of all that is to come. Sometimes, even the most revered pop-culture treasures have an expiry date.

After the wedding scene, the characters — and the audience — discover that the thrill is gone. In spite of their careers, wealth and mostly happy romantic lives, life isn't getting easier for the ladies. Miranda must contend with a sexist boss at her high-powered law firm; Samantha battles the horrors of menopause with a litany of Suzanne Somers-approved vitamins and patches; and Charlotte tries to keep a prim smile while her two screaming toddlers destroy her vintage cream Valentino skirt. Across town, Carrie is having a "midwife crisis," rifling through takeout menus and fluffing the pillows in her Architectural Digest apartment, while a fully domesticated Mr. Big (Chris Noth) lies camped out in front of his big-screen TV.

Any one of these setups could prove fodder for a meaty half-hour episode of Sex and the City – even mentioning menopause in a mainstream movie vehicle evokes some of the taboo-busting bravery the series was known for. But there's nothing in Sex and the City 2 that warrants its sludgy two-and-a-half hour running time, especially since Michael Patrick King is really only interested in using the women's problems as an excuse for them to jet off on a much-needed vaycay to Abu Dhabi.

Once these brash women leave the USA for the UAE, the movie sputters and dies, resorting to an endless stream of lethargic scenes of the women lounging in Patricia Field headbands and oversized sunglasses poolside. In the barely-there plotline, Charlotte frets that her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), might cheat with a hot nanny, while Carrie experiences some lingering (and characteristically self-destructive) feelings after a chance meeting with old flame Aidan (John Corbett).

Aside from a camel ride and countless hot-flash jokes, not much transpires — though true to the rampant materialist vibe that marred some of the show's final seasons, there is a whole lot of shopping. When Carrie — decked out in a garish J'adore Dior T-shirt that screams ugly American tourist — heads out to observe the wondrous Abu Dhabi landscape, her biggest reaction comes in finding a market stall that sells $20 shoes.

Carrie and her husband, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), don't see eye to eye in Sex and the City 2. (Craig Blankenhorn/Warner Bros. Pictures)

That the ladies would drool over products ranging from Birkin bags to Arabic Pringles is to be expected from a franchise that made Manolo Blahnik a household name; Sex and the City 2's vaguely racist depiction of Muslim women is less forgivable. As a straight-faced Miranda attempts to give clunky explanations of various Middle Eastern customs, her cackling cohorts make "Ewwww!" faces after sampling rosewater tea, and deliver dimwitted cracks like, "I am digging the golden trim on the Real Housewife from Abu Dhabi!" When the foursome discovers that under their burkas, Muslim women are really just brand whores after their own hearts, it leaves a truly bitter aftertaste.

The cast's considerable talents are wasted throughout, and you'll cringe every time Cattrall's oversexed character has to deliver a crass "down under" joke, or Cynthia Nixon has to sell a dud like, "I'm going to turn this inter-friend-tion into an inter-fun-tion!" By the movie's mid-point, it becomes apparent that King has lost interest in some of his once-vibrant characters, turning Samantha into a cartoon, and relegating Miranda and Charlotte to the sidelines. As the vampy Samantha and the self-absorbed Carrie hunker down to mock their friends for being so boring and uptight, I suspect fans of the show will wonder, as I did, what they ever saw in these smug characters — and why they remain friends.

This is a shame, because when Charlotte and Miranda are finally given something to do, Sex and the City 2 displays glimmers of what once made the show brilliant. Left alone at the hotel with no men or baubles to distract them, the two women sit down for some cosmopolitans and frank talk about their lives, confiding to each other that, as mothers of young kids, there are some days when they can barely hold it together. Davis and Nixon really shine here, managing to make the scene funny and poignant all at once, and providing the supportive, sisterly vibe the rest of the movie sorely lacks. It's the one moment in Sex and the City 2 where substance triumphs over style.

Unfortunately, the moment arrives too late. By the time Samantha's yelling, "I'm going through menopause, I can't sit in coach," even the most diehard fans of the show will feel let down. As a flight attendant approaches Carrie, asking, "Do you have anything to declare?" the frazzled heroine replies, "Yes, I'm a mess." My sentiments exactly.

Sex and the City opens May 27.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBC News.