Review: The Women is a smash hit, nothing more but nothing less than just hilarious, flat-out fun that manages to top Sex and the City in every way imaginable.

Story: This smart remake/update of a 70-year-old play and movie may not win any Oscars, but it turns out to be as gorgeously entertaining as its title indicates. Based on the play and 1939 movie of the same name that skewered upper society women of the era, writer/director Diane English has kept the bones intact but updated it all to include women of various places in life. Women who are still trying to find love and happiness, and above all else, female friendship. In their world, life seems to revolve around Tanya (Debi Mazar), the gossipy manicurist at the Saks Fifth Avenue Beauty Salon who spills the beans to magazine editor Sylvie (Annette Bening) that her best friend Mary’s (Meg Ryan) Wall Street tycoon husband has been catting around with voluptuous perfume “spritzer girl” Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes). Deciding in tandem with Mary’s other pals – the housewife Edie (Debra Messing) and writer Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith) – to tell Mary, Sylvie sparks an incident that sets off fireworks in all their lives, with betrayals, career crises, pregnancy, retreats, revenge and forgiveness all figuring into the male-less proceedings.

Acting: The Women’s entire ensemble cast is pure pleasure, and it’s exclusively made up of some of the best comedic actresses around. Even all the extras are women, but then that’s sort of the joke of the whole premise. Estrogen flows freely in this group, led by Meg Ryan, as the victimized wife and mother whose husband plays around on her and whose own father fires her from her job. Talk about a tough week! With money lines like her declaration of sexual prowess, “I can suck the nails out of a board,” Ryan has some of her best moments in recent years, playing nicely off co-star Bening. As Mary’s best friend, she’s the workaholic but aging editor of a women’s magazine that’s on the edge of change she can’t seem to keep up with. Bening beautifully reflects the quandary of a career woman who has to watch her back at every moment. Messing and Pinkett Smith round out the fearsome foursome and each gets some choice comic material to play, particularly Messing’s histrionics as the pregnant Edie. Suffice to say the inevitable but riotously funny delivery scene is well worth waiting for. Mendes plays the vamp bit for all it’s worth, stunning in all her cunning. Mazar, though, is a bit too laid back as the manicurist with all the secrets.

Direction: Writer/director Diane English says she spent 14 frustrating years trying to bring this sassy update of Claire Booth Luce’s creation to the screen. Timing is everything and now with female bonding films all the rage, The Women, circa 2008, could be just the ticket. Certainly its strength is the comic savvy of English, who spent several seasons on “Murphy Brown” honing her skills. It pays off here with a talented cast delivering her snappy lines with expert comic timing. Sure, even updated as it is, The Women still has the creakiness of a vehicle that peaked in 1939, but for whatever reason the old-fashioned craftsmanship still works even in an era where women have gone on to achievements not dreamed about when Luce wrote the play. As a director, English is all about protecting her script, and it’s the tight pacing of one amusing sequence after another that makes this little trifle sail by right down to the final sight gag. See it.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 2 .5 stars.

Review: Even without shoehorning his onscreen alter ego Madea into the drawn-out proceedings, writer-director Tyler Perry’s offers yet another dull, obvious and repetitive sermon on the importance of family values.

Story: They may come from different worlds socially and financially, but working mom Alice (Alfre Woodard) and multi-millionaire Charlotte (Kathy Bates) have been best friends for decades. So when Alice’s social-climbing daughter Andrea (Sanaa Lathan) marries construction worker Chris (Rockmond Dunbar), Charlotte foots the bill for a wedding at her mansion. But Charlotte also wants to punish her conniving son William (Cole Hauser) for eloping with a weak-willed woman she abhors, so she throws the wedding she once planned for William. Four years later, Andrea and Chris are both working for Charlotte’s construction company, which William runs. Chris dreams of starting his own business with Andrea’s brother-in-law Ben (Perry), but Andrea doesn’t think her blue-collar husband can make it on his own. Besides, she’s too busy doing William’s bidding as he plots to wrestle control of the company away from Charlotte. But the tough-as-nails Charlotte isn’t going down without a fight. If this sounds a bit soapy, it is. In true “The Bold and the Beautiful” fashion, there’s plenty of corporate backstabbing, (unseen), bed-hopping, sibling rivalries and life-changing revelations that threaten to tear apart Alice and Charlotte’s enmeshed families. It’s all very predictable stuff – you’ll have no trouble guessing who’s sick, sleeping around, or ready to crack – though the momentous third-act surprise forces Perry to tie up loose ends in a contrived and unsatisfying way.

Acting: It’s safe to say The Family That Preys features the best cast Perry’s worked with. Regrettably, he can’t break himself of his annoying tendency to compel his actors to underplay their roles. Even such old pros as Bates and Woodard seem oddly subdued. In Bates’ case, that’s not too bad considering she gives Titanic-sized performances when left unchecked. But it comes as a welcome sight to see Bates break free of Perry’s bonds and get loud and lively during a Thelma & Louise-ish road trip. Woodard, sadly, really can’t do too much to make the saint-like Alice come across as anything but a stick in the mud. Lathan is so frosty that your body temperature drops 20 degrees whenever she and a barely audible Hauser cross paths. As for “Prison Break’s” Rockmond Dunbar, it’s a shame that the sympathy he engenders for the unappreciated Chris evaporates the second he commits an act that’s not just inexcusable, it’s unwarranted. Perry, though, has a hard time handling Taraji P Henson, who is the closest to Madea that The Family That Preys has. She’s smart, sassy and scrappy. Not that we miss Perry and his housedress. There’s no place for his pistol-packing big mama in The Family That Preys. In fact, Madea’s comedic presence would have severely disrupted the serious tone that Perry maintains throughout The Family That Preys.

Direction: What more can Perry say about the dynamics of the black family – poor or affluent – in today’s America that he hasn’t already said? Ah, yes, Perry’s never before seen the need to tackle the issue of intolerance in a direct manner. There have been hints that some of his protagonists have suffered as a result of institutional racism, but he’d rather spread the Lord’s word than yelling in the face of bigots. But early in The Family That Preys, as Andrea questions Charlotte’s motives for throwing her a storybook wedding and accuses her mother of “playing Stepin Fetchit,” there’s optimism that Perry finally wants to do more than bash us over the head with the Bible. After all, Perry’s sixth dramedy is the first to feature major white characters. Alas, The Family That Preys turns out to be just like every Perry preachy production before it. Race doesn’t come into play as Perry offers familiar observations on dysfunctional family feuds in his customary but uninvolving point-and-shoot style. Maybe Perry simply feels now is the time to broaden his appeal by making Charlotte and her family white, which is fine. And it’s his prerogative not to address racism or any other inflammatory social issue now or ever. Regardless, as one of the leading voices in black cinema, Perry has wasted a great opportunity to speak his mind about the state of race relations at a time when an African-American finally has a legitimate chance of winning the U.S. presidency.

Bottom Line: Hollywood.com rated this film 2 stars.