April 26^th sees the launch of a new dating service, Cloud Girlfriend. The service is for starters free, “unlike your last date” they cry.* With it you create your own perfect partner and he or most likely she will leave messages for you on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, giving your friends and any potential love-interests the impression that you are quite the playah.

Yeah, I said playah.

The 4 easy steps to activate the service, according to the website:

1. Define your perfect girlfriend
2. Cloud Girlfriend brings her into existence
3. Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network
4. Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl

The posts will reportedly come from real women, not bots, and to your specifications. Are you creeped out yet?

This could be you

And here are a few words from co-founder David Fuhriman:

“What we are creating blurs the lines between reality and imagination. We allow people to define their ideal self, find their perfect girlfriend or boyfriend and connect and interact as if that person existed.”

The creators also believe that the service could be oddly instructive, teaching users how to manage their relationships. Mmm, that would be more believable if the relationships were real, and the people posting were invested in each other.

Where the site gets patronising and creepy is the duping-potential-love-interests aspect.

Cloud Girlfriend’s tagline is: “The easiest way to get a girlfriend is to already have one”. The site aims to make users more appealing to the fairer sex by making them appear unavailable.

The rationale behind this is quite awful. To get a girlfriend, you must HAVE a girlfriend. Ladies, does this trouble you at all? To know that you are all potential man stealers waiting for the social signal that a man is desirable before taking action?

Nothing drives us wenches wild with desire more than to know we must oust someone else to walk the path of true lo—wait a second, you tricked us! This is no basis for a relationship at all!

I doubt this will be the new eHarmony, its appeal is…niche at best and oh to be a fly on the wall if you manage to nab a girl/boyfriend this way and decide to come clean.

What could happen if your virtual girlfriend goes rogue

*If you bitch about details like paying for dinner as if you’re therefore entitled to a feel of some boob, you quite frankly deserve to be alone. Besides, shoes don’t come cheap and most modern, enlightened young ladies offer to go Dutch.

All too often posting an opinion on a forum or beneath an article feels like being dressed as a postman and thrust into a kennel full of hungry Dobermans* with hot dogs stuffed in your khakis.

And while, as Charlie Brooker this morning pointed out, there are plenty of unpleasant characters on social networks like Twitter, to me it feels less like a pressure cooker of penned-in attitudes. I’m sorry if I’m doing your forum experience a disservice, but I’ve seen far too many aggressive campaigns against innocuous comments to defend them strongly. Context is everything of course.

This weekend I was particularly amused/frustrated/surprised by the comments on the Eurogamer website in response to Rob Fahey’s article denouncing Duke Nukem Forever’s ‘Capture the Babe’ mode.

For those of you who haven’t heard, the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever has a controversial multiplayer mode entitled ‘Capture the Babe.’ You can guess the format: Instead of capturing a flag, you capture a woman. However these ladies may get hysterical and when they do you must administer a “reassuring slap” on the bottom to calm them down.

So far so… oh lord.

Rob’s article argued that the mode is misogynistic. He’s had hundreds of comments in response to the article, many decrying it as the worst the site has ever published.

A “reassuring” slap

The slap is supposed to be “reassuring”, playful even. Does that not sound a little off to you? Bringing a hysterical woman to heel by a spanking, under the pretence that it’s for her own good? Hyper reality is one thing but normalising that concept doesn’t exactly make me feel comfortable. I get the Duke Nukem house style, but is that all there is? Compounded expectations and “c’maaan, it’s satire honest” winks to camera?

But isn’t gaming an art form just like any other, and shouldn’t it be allowed to reflect anything and everything, including cartoonish sexism?  True, but it’s safe to say that gaming has for a long time been a male-dominated pastime. The industry is trying to shake the image of being run by the desires of 15 year old boys and their penises. By including a mode as objectifying as this arguably is, Duke Nukem Forever is in danger of looking like an ugly throwback whose only defence is nostalgia.

Because I have breasts, expressing these opinions leaves me open to the following abuses:

• I have no sense of humour
• I am possibly on my period
• I have not had sex recently
• Perhaps my mother and father were related
• I prefer the company of women
• That I am fat, ugly and never leave the house/an attention-seeking whore (delete as appropriate)
• I may or may not be a poopy head

If any of these sound familiar, perhaps you’re a woman who has experienced Xbox Live co-op play.

Anyway some of my favourite comments so far:

“My girlfriend says you are a bit too sensitive!”

Yes Rob, even a GIRL thinks you’re a pussy.

“It’s harmless fun – I’ve asked my wife about it and she thought it was typical, but pretty funny… Should we ban Carry on Camping too?”

If you have to cite Barbara Windsor boob comedy… There are scores of “I asked my sister/girlfriend/mum about this and they think it’s a big fuss over nothing” posts.

“Duke without sexism is like the Bible without Jesus.”

Jesus would turn the other cheek of course.

“What is this pinko brigade article? Fucking hilarious shit!”

Pinko Brigade will be appearing at Glastonbury this year.

For the most part these comments made me laugh (and I hope they did the same for you). Where it isn’t funny is that there seems to be a complete lack of balance: you’re either a PC asshole who can’t see the funny side, or an insensitive potential wife beater. You’re either for ass slapping or you demand industry-wide censorship. The few people willing to tred the middle ground get an earful for their trouble.

This story has once again shown up an ugly side to the bottom half of the webpage. Comment after comment suggesting everything from Rob’s state of mind to calling for his sacking from Eurogamer. The real story here is not the article but the response to the article and what it says about how we debate these issues among ourselves.

Damsels. Rob Fahey not pictured

One of the best comments I read said: “while I don’t share his outrage…I do share his frustration.” That’s really the point. I don’t think Rob was trying to act the white knight and rescue (or impress) us damsels, and I don’t think his was a poor article. A piece like this reminds us how things have changed, how attitudes have moved on (why else would people complain?). I believe it’s important to move away from certain stereotypes and I can’t defend an ass slap, regardless of Duke’s reputation.

I haven’t played the game yet, I’ve seen footage and read the press releases, and I’m not going to dismiss the entire game because of what is in all probability a feature added to stir up controversy and gain column inches but I can’t say I’m impressed. Nor am I impressed by the aggressive personal attacks on Fahey for what is after all an editorial opinion.

Games are fantasy and a platform to be someone entirely different, and act as you wouldn’t necessarily act in real life. But there’s something about ‘Capture the Babe’ that makes me feel uncomfortable.

What I will say is that times have changed since Duke last graced consoles. I don’t think this mode is particularly inventive. It feels more like a cheap marketing tool from an era we outgrew long ago. I’m all for a bit of fun, but not like this.

Oh and while I remember, here is an example of sexism used for satirical purposes:

And here is the Duke Nukem cover art:

I’m not feeling it guys.

*No offence intended to Dobermans. They are quite nice when you get to know them.

In a punch the air statement from solicitors, Prieskel and Co, the firm said:

Our client Paul Chambers has decided today to proceed with a High Court challenge to his conviction under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.  Paul was convicted on 10 May 2010 by Doncaster Magistrates’ Court and his appeal was turned down by Doncaster Crown Court on 11 November 2010.

Paul has instructed David Allen Green, head of media law at Preiskel & Co, and Ben Emmerson QC of Matrix Chambers, one of the UK’s leading human rights and criminal lawyers, for this challenge.

We’re all behind you Paul.

According to his good lady CrazyColours they will need to raise £10,000 for legal fees in order to proceed. If you would like to donate to this worthy cause please click here.

"as long as we live we must remain true to ourselves"

Graham Linehan has assured the good people of Twitter that there will be no celebrity charity single. A comforting assurance in these dark times.

If you can’t afford to donate, please RT the link and get people talking about the case.

Yesterday Twitter was collectively aghast at the news (via Jack of Kent) that Paul Chambers had lost the appeal to overturn his conviction of “menace,” stemming from a joke posted on the site.

Paul was arrested in January this year on suspicion of terrorism for posting the following tweet:

“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

I think I said worse last Christmas when my plane was grounded due to snow and I faced a Planes, Trains and Automobiles-like trek to get home for the holidays. I’ve also said far worse about…well it’ll take a while to do a mental recap, but that’s just human nature. We say things we don’t mean, we make flippant remarks we wouldn’t dream of acting on and exaggerate for comic effect. Social media grants us a wonderful platform for these flights of fantasy, hyperbolic rants and bad puns.

Since when is that a criminal offence? Well since yesterday.

The Crown Prosecution Service found no evidence of Paul’s intention to cause his followers to believe he was making a real threat but decided it was in the “public interest” to prosecute him anyway. He was found guilty on 10 May of sending a menacing message. He appealed this decision but Judge Jacqueline Davies dismissed his appeal on every count and he now faces several thousand pounds of legal costs.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

And the arrests are mounting up. Conservative councillor Gareth Compton was arrested for the tweet: “can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.” While that strikes me as an altogether more menacing remark, directed at a single person, I must say that I never thought a tweet could possibly lead to a criminal conviction.

The issue boils down to a chasm of understanding between those who use and understand sites like Twitter and those who have not. A simple choice you might think, one down to taste –these sites aren’t for everyone. And yet a man is now guilty of a criminal offence for something that I do every day. A judge found this an acceptable act, yet I am repulsed by it. That’s a hell of a divide.

Writer Graham Linehan put the issue brilliantly in a post on the Free Speech blog when he said the case was “the clearest indication yet that the world is divided into two sorts of people at the moment: The people who “get it”, and the people who don’t.”

Comedy writer and Twitter grandmaster Graham Linehan

This goes beyond telling your Dad how to work the Sky+. This shows a worrying gulf between the increasingly tech savvy public, blogging community and writers and a judiciary now facing legitimate criticisms for being out of touch.

But while the Crown Prosecution Service deemed Paul’s flippant remark to a handful of people within the “public interest” the English libel laws do not seem to protect the rights of science writers and doctors to scrutinise what they feel are unsubstantiated or misleading claims. Instead, they face legal action for expressing their opinions. What about the public interest in these instances?

Yesterday morning I raised a chuckle quickly followed by an eyebrow over the ridiculous story about Rodial’s Boob Job cream taking the moral high ground. The company sells a £125 cream said to, with repeat applications, increase breast size. Their website says:

“Always dreamed of a fuller bust but dreaded the thought of going under the knife? Rodial introduces a revolutionary formula in boob job. Boob job works with your natural fat cells. As the fat cells move around the body after eating, boob job “blocks” the fat into the area where the product has been applied, so the bust and décolleté areas. You will see a gradual increase in cup size within 56 days as well as gaining an instant lifting and firming effect. Increase in cup size by 8.4%. “

Exhibits A and B

Quite. For a mere £195 you can add a bum lift to that offer ladies.

Plastic surgeon Dalia Nield was quoted saying that it was “highly unlikely” that the cream could do what it claimed and it now appears that Nield has been threatened with a libel action. You would think that as a doctor she would be allowed to express concerns about the validity of these pretty incredible claims (let us remember this is about a cream that claims to make your boobs bigger) as they are in the public interest.

But Nield’s experience is by no means unique. You need only recall the case of Ben Goldacre (sued by vitamin peddler Matthias Rath) and Simon Singh’s battle with the British Chiropractic Association (sure we can cure colic) in recent years to see the unfair dangers that science writers face for being skeptical about unsubstantiated claims; scrutinising so the general public has a clearer view of products and services that could affect their lives.

Coincidentally this week marks the first anniversary of the Free Speech is Not for Sale report, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law, its hostility to writers and seemingly friendly position towards powerful corporations or individuals looking to silence dissenting voices. The British Government has committed to drafting a bill to reform libel but the campaign needs more support and I would urge you all to sign the campaign petition via www.libelreform.org/sign.

Go to www.libelreform.org/sign

Where does this leave us? When the rights of those looking out for our health and welfare are silenced out of fear of what a corporation with limitless money and legal representation can do. And now the rights of private citizens to make jokes and be themselves- to just be funny – are in danger from those within this legal framework who do not seem to understand the world in which they live.

Hell our cultural identity is so defined by that dry, sometimes bawdy, sometimes inappropriate, sardonic British humour. As a west coast Scot I wouldn’t be able to communicate with 80% of my family without sarcasm. It is part of our makeup and the day a man is pilloried, financially crippled and branded a criminal for cracking a joke is a sad day indeed.

The issues of censorship and libel reform that have arisen through these separate cases highlight a singular need: a need for change. What disturbs me most is that underneath these seemingly different issues there lies one ugly suggestion – keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything out of turn, or what the courts define as out of turn; don’t disagree with companies and individuals more powerful than yourselves. That’s a frankly appalling message to pass on to the public and we need only look at the protests outside Millbank House this week to see what happens when people feel marginalised and ignored (and of course hijacked by violent thugs).

What I ask of you today is to sign up to the Libel Reform petition, follow the #libelreform hashtag and retweet the below 140 character edit of Paul’s original post with the hashtag #IamSpartacus.

“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” #iamspartacus

It’s already trending worldwide, has the support of high profile tweeters such as Graham Linehan, Dave Gorman, David Mitchell, and Marcus Brigstocke. You can also donate to Paul’s defence fund here.

If awareness is not raised and resistance falters we run the risk of our civil liberties being slowly chipped away and that is surely something worth rebelling against.

Lulu. Learn from her mistakes

I still remember picking the thing up from the Sloane-ranger friendly, overpriced stockist. 12 years old, bright eyed and filled with hope. Hope that was soon dashed at the realisation that THAT would be mine for the next four years at least. Wearing this crime against fabric was a daily chore. I avoided friends outside school, avoided being in town and even hid from my boyfriend if I saw him on the underground it was so awful. All this because of a few yards of poorly-thought-out material.

A few times a year, for charity events like Comic Relief, our educational overlords threw us a bone. Pay a pound, wear your own clothes. Hoozah and hoorah! Not so. The uniform was nothing, zilch nada niet, in comparison to 500 hormonal women competing for fashion asshole of the year. Some would bring in their latest Donna Karen and compare exorbitant prices, while the more normal teenagers with parents who spent their cash on things like, bills and the occasional MacDonald’s arrived in jeans and a t-shirt. That’s not to say it was a bad t-shirt, but it wasn’t fcuk. Pay money to feel like the scaffy kid for a day, great.

During my Mansun fangirl years, I came decked in with one of Paul Draper’s then-trademark German army shirts (which I still own and love). Boy did I look out of place. Pristine hair, manicures, designer labels. It all looked nice on the surface but I can’t say it ever appealed. Well, maybe the hair. At least my Prisoner t-shirt looked cool. To me, and the three other people who’d seen it.

Paul Draper: probably still would

Those out of place feelings have never left me. No matter how well dressed I feel, I have to admit that I have been sent into spirals of fashion inadequacy worthy of my teenage self on more than one occasion by a particular type of woman. The morning preener. And we’re not just talking tidy, taking pride in yourself here. There are a few women out there who see life as one big fashion shoot and they seem to love getting on my train. This morning she took the form of a tall blonde, well manicured Amazonian decked out in full business regalia who still managed to look like she’d stepped out of the pages of Glamour: power dressing special.

Sleep still clogging my eyes, decked in jeans and trainers, I’m sure I looked the picture of scaff next to this none-the-wiser woman. I’m 5’9” and she still towered over me. Stilettos before noon? Are you insane? You can’t run for the bus in those heels missy. My hands were in my pockets, music on full and instead of feeling like the empowered, takes no shit journo I should’ve felt like, I felt like an awkward, sheepish girl, lacking in poise and certainly minus the exhausting morning preen that women of her ilk take in their ridiculously large stride.

They hunt in packs

My morning ritual consists of wake up, put alarm on snooze for 40 minutes, drag self to shower, dress, foundation, hair, done. I’m by no means a slob, but some of these women are obviously getting up at the crack of 5 to curl their hair and wax their bikini lines. University was much the same, if more exaggerated.

Let’s see if any of this is famililar. You’re at uni, you had a few drinks after lectures yesterday that led to you being dragged down the union club night for a few hours. You danced like a twat, someone suggested tequila shots (probably you) and you went back round halls and slept on a mate’s floor still clutching a slice of pizza. You have a lecture at 9. Why lord, why? No toiletries, no shower without added verrucas and limited resources to make yourself look presentable for the three hours you’re needed, but you still manage to drag yourself from the pit, wash up and brace yourself for a morning’s pain. And you know what you see after you’ve found that nice friendly seat at the back with your friends, all wearing sunglasses indoors and half splayed on the desks, in obvious pain? You see the uni glamourpuss.

Nauseatingly quaffed hair, perfect make up and outfit coordination, while you languish in your mate’s Hawaiian shirt, the only clean item you could scrape off the floor that morning that didn’t smell of feet. She strides in, confident. Heels (Strathclyde students – our campus was on a bloody hill for god’s sake), matching bag. In the movie of life, the music swells and the camera lens is greased with Vaseline. Cherubs dance around her; she stops to pick up a small animated bluebird before bursting into song. Okay, maybe not the last part but that’s how it looks to scanky, probably smelly and thoroughly exhausted you. Stare at her, bore holes in her cranium with your loathing, let the hate flow through you.

Not that I’m bitter or anything. Wonder what happened to that chick? She turned pro.

It’s just exhausting. Fact is, I doubt it would matter what time of the morning I woke up at then or any time today. These nauseatingly ethereal women exist, possibly in some kind of time stasis or in pods, and there’s no point complaining about it. Just remember that while you stayed up watching that last repeat of The Crystal Maze on Challenge at 3am with real people, laughing and drinking beer that she was probably in bed at 10 and wouldn’t be able to belch the word “bollocks” on command if her life depended on it. You’re bloody marvelous, jeans t-shirt and all.

With such a gap between concept and release, there was cause for concern that Alan came onto the market under a cloud. A big “is that it?” shaped cloud. Thankfully the game has enough originality to silence some of the ‘nice idea, shame it’s not 2007’ naysayers.

Bestselling author Alan Wake is suffering from writer’s block. He and his wife Alice head to small town USA, otherwise known as Bright Falls, to get away from the pressures of fame, not suspecting that the town harbours a great evil.

Alice disappears and Alan blacks out, awakening a week later with no memory of anything since her disappearance. Mysteriously, pages of a manuscript he doesn’t remember writing are scattered everywhere and the locals are possessed by this unseen evil, or Dark Presence – get used to hearing that phrase a lot. Alan must fight his way through the town to find Alice and unravel the mystery behind the darkness.

What unfolds is a surprising and highly memorable gaming experience, which celebrates the writer’s imagination as a source of both creativity and destruction.

The story is told in episodic format, rather like a TV mini series, complete with “previously on Alan Wake” recaps at the beginning of each chapter. It’s impossible not to notice the clear influence of TV series like Twin Peaks and The X Files in the subject matter, characters and setting, albeit with a pinch of Silent Hill and a fair chunk of Stephen King. So, it’s a video game about a novelist, told like a TV show? Right.

Alan is no obvious hero. He’s called Alan for a start. Having a writer as a protagonist, picking up scraps of past, present and future events, makes for a disorientating yet unique experience where events feel like they are being lived, created and reported all at the same time.

The game plays with these storytelling techniques with striking confidence. Manuscript pages add to the game universe, putting flesh on the bones of the supporting characters, giving us an insight into Alan’s thoughts and emotions. They also scare the shit out of us by describing events yet to happen. The phrase “and that’s when I heard the chainsaw” springs to mind.

The cornerstone of Alan Wake is light and dark; Stay in the light, use it to burn the darkness out of your enemies, then shoot them in the face. Dodge your attackers, recharge your flashlight batteries , keep an eye out for the flickering of a failing generator and movement in the forest around you. This is a game which plays on our primal fear of the dark, of the unknown with great success, incorporating it into the title’s combat strategy.

Location and character designs are remarkable; the dreamy views of Bright Falls from its humble, small town centre to the sun-soaked mountains and forests which envelop it are a joy to behold and the characters are impressively rendered. You can see how Remedy spent their time.

It’s an arguably unoriginal story – the old save the spouse chestnut – but told in an original fashion. The cut scenes are compelling and the unfolding mystery is well thought out. The soundtrack matches the story perfectly with shades of sadness, loss and pain all beautifully communicated, punctuating the story with moments of true poignancy. In fact the sound design in general is quite brilliant.

There are some niggles of course.  There’s never any serious threat of running out of ammo or batteries, so the more hardcore gamer might want to push up the difficulty to make it interesting. And the gameplay does get repetitive. Wandering through the woods, you’ll hear that familiar sound cue, the camera angle will reveal an attacker shrouded in black and battle ensues. Aim your flashlight, shoot. It gets a little old. What saves Alan Wake is the tension it wracks up in spite of this and the unique perspective we glean on our leading man. This is a creepy game, to be played at night and in these perfectly formed episodes.

“Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear. In a horror story, the victim keeps asking why. But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end.” Stephen King

The shadow of prolonged development time looms large over Alan Wake. The general, possibly convenient, opinion is that the game would have been more impressive or innovative if it had been released before now. It’s a fair cop, but this is one occasion where perhaps we should climb off our fanboy soapboxes and stop declaring shenanigans  because a game took that little bit longer than expected.

With an intriguing story, solid voice acting and beautiful character design and soundtrack, Alan Wake is no game changer but certainly a remarkable achievement.  And a game designed to be played in the dark.

If you’d like to hear this review and some other ramblings about games, please subscribe to the Gamewank podcast. Sketches, top banter and great reviews every episode from Jim Trinca and Ric Morgan. Go to www.gamewank.com for more details.

Sadly, and slightly more rubbish, I’ve also recently been dumped. I say recently, I mean yesterday. It’s still sinking in, I won’t go into detail but suffice to say today is not the best of days.

There are a fair few stages of any break up, some of which are repeated until our brains start thwacking us on the nose with a figurative rolled up newspaper. According to the ever handy Wikipedia and grief counselor and breakup expert Susan J. Elliott these stages can be classified under:

• Shock and Disbelief
• Review and Painful Relinquishment
• Reorganisation, Integration and Acceptance

Given that I’m just about 24 hours in, I’m still somewhere between stage 1 and stage 2. My plan is to listen to a lot of PJ Harvey and Kate Bush and try and get back some semblance of happiness this week. It’s also Monday so I can sneakily catch up with last night’s True Blood – I wonder if Alexander Skarsgard is single… In the meantime, if you can’t download or listen to Gamewank I’ll post the script of my review of Alan Wake in just a few moments.

PS Sorry for the emo post. Here’s footage of me and my best friend Lindsay having a great time on The Final Countdown episode of The IT Crowd. I should’ve blogged about it at the time, but hell here it is now. They asked us to geek up, I just came in my own clothes. Look out for Number 6 style blazer behind Moss.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but yes they have. Watching these movies is like watching a loved yet slightly past it family pet drowned in front of you, or an old school friend violated while you’re tied to a chair, looking on in helpless, agonising horror.

Sex and the City 2 picks up two years after the first movie: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) are still married; Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is juggling her home life with her career as a lawyer; Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is sinking under the pressures of motherhood and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is a walking chemists, staving off menopause with as many tablets and creams as she can cram into her eager cheeks.

The film kicks off with a wedding. The set is straight out of a 50s musical, there are swans and white everywhere and even a male choir singing show tunes. A big neon sign begins to manifest: this is a gay wedding. Just to hammer home this subtle vignette, Liza Minnelli officiates the ceremony. Apparently passing out of Judy Garland means you are automatically ordained as a minister in the church of gay. Harmless fun I hear you cry. Granted but nothing will prepare you for the sight of Ms Minnelli (64) singing and dancing her way through Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. At this point, my heart began to sink.

I am woman, hear me gag: the SATC ladies hit the karaoke bar

After another run in with her dismissive boss, Miranda quits her law firm and can finally make her son’s school events. Charlotte is crying in cupboards over dealing with the demands of a screaming toddler and a little girl who dares to muck up Mummy’s vintage Valentino while Samantha is quite comfortable smearing age defying creams on her intimate regions in full view of her staff. Carrie in the mean time has turned into a kept woman.

The scriptwriters can try and fool me by telling me she writes books but there’s barely a snifter to be seen. Carrie’s previous life as a columnist and freelance writer is almost entirely gone, replaced by the occasional mention merely to move the plot along. Instead, she spends her days decorating the apartment only to cajole and guilt-trip her husband into leaving it as often as possible to wine and dine her. Big’s more interested in nights in with takeout, watching old movies with his wife. Carrie nags and whines about them becoming just another bored married couple, so Big suggests that maybe they take a few days a week off. “Is this because I’m a bitch wife who nags all the time?” Yes Carrie, yes it is.

But with all these problems mounting up, surely we need a flimsy plot devise? Help is at hand. PR guru Samantha is offered an all expenses paid trip to Abu Dhabi courtesy of a rich sheikh with a hotel to promote. The four ladies are whisked off first class, arriving to a fleet of cars, personal butlers, and a private suite worth $22,000 a night. Here is your bedroom – gasp. Here is the salon – gasp. Here are your servants – gasp. Here is your private bar – gasp. It’s a miracle the tour didn’t kill them.

The women go on spa days, shop and ogle some menfolk etc, but the real story here is how much you grow to hate them, particularly Carrie and Samantha.

Carrie is a chore throughout this film. Snippy with her husband, at times nasty to her friends, she even goes to dinner with her ex dolled up to the nines, flirting with him disgracefully after reading a scathing review of her latest book. It’s blatant that she’s using him to make herself feel better, basking in his praise and enjoying every moment of the attention. While the Carrie Bradshaw of the TV series struggled at times to get by, movie Carrie wants the big apartment, the huge closet, the massive wedding. Now she wants sparkle every minute of every day. She’s selfish, contrary and just a little paranoid.

Samantha has turned into a grotesque caricature of herself, desperately clinging to her libido with lotions and potions, her dialogue peppered with abysmal puns and double entendres (“Lawrence of my Labia?” Oh please). Female self expression is one thing, whapping your cleavage out by the pool in a conservative country simply because you’re used to having your own way is quite another. Her frankness may have once been charming, but pretending to fellate a hookah for the erection-inducing delight of her male companion while the patrons try and eat their dinner in peace is not helping the cause. Charlotte and Miranda at one point even make a toast to women who don’t have full time nannies. Who can relate to these women anymore?

And that’s before I get to the ham-fisted cultural stereotyping. I’m quite sure the writers thought that moving the action to Adu Dhabi would give them a chance to present their take on the issue of women’s rights in the region. In reality the film comes across as intensely disrespectful almost suggesting that really all Middle Eastern women want to be just like this lot.

This is summed up when a scantily clad Samantha drops the contents of her handbag, condoms and all, in front of a crowd of men then gestures to the now-angry mob graphically what she does with them. The group is then rescued by some veiled women. The writers skirted making a point about women like them lacking a voice earlier in the script, only to completely destroy any point they were trying to make by having these women cast off their robes to reveal the spring collection underneath. Lookie ladies, underneath all that black these women want to be just like us. Yay fashion. I remained stony faced. High-handed, offensive and thoroughly insulting to its audience’s intelligence, unless you’re the type of person who believes all that Johnny Foreigner needs is a bit of Western civilisation. Or frocks.

This is not a film for anyone who enjoyed the TV series. The sassy, liberated career women of that show are gone. And it’s not a question of an audience expecting characters to stay the same. Carrie once said ‘I cannot stay single for you.’ And we didn’t expect her to. The women who married, married good men and for solid reasons and while Carrie ended the series coupled, what came later was her business. What the movies have done is lobotomise these characters, distilling their most obvious and irritating characteristics into 2+ hours of twaddle. With cocktails.

Carrie and the ladies in better days

The films are in fact for people who hated the series. Those who believed it was entirely filled with rutting and overpriced shoes. A vapid fashion show written to further enrage anyone who rolled their eyes at its very name. Oh no, you don’t watch that show do you? Everything that has been levelled at the series in criticism has been distilled and amplified tenfold: Shallow consumerism, self- centeredness, opulence and decadence for its own sake. The film grabs you with both hands and rubs your face in it. It’s a misogynist’s paradise, full to the brim of ugly female clichés.

The script is clunky, the plotting worse and character development is non-existent. I fail to see how any cinema goer, regardless of his/her (but let’s face it, more likely her) interest in the series could see this desperate and wholly repellent addendum to an otherwise witty and fun series as anything more than vacuous nonsense, accompanied by ludicrous frocks and a bad taste left in one’s mouth.

I urge, implore and heartily dissuade anyone from going to see this nightmare of cinema. Do it for me, your blood pressure and to rule out any possibility of a SATC trilogy.

To them I say…