Since its small screen inception in 1998, Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, has served as a chatty, fashionable sounding board for the thrills and travails of big-city professional women, and the turbulence in romantic expectation that the changing landscape of gender roles has wrought. The follow-up to the series’ enormously successful transition to the big screen, Sex and the City 2 spins forward its heroines on an adventure abroad. The result is a bloated, wearyingly unsubtle and dramatically inert valentine to conspicuous consumption. Writer-director Michael Patrick King, who served as show runner on the TV series for most of its duration, aims for a comedy of material extravagance, but his tone is so willfully broad as to cause dissociation with almost any sentient adult, regardless of income bracket. Working with a reported wardrobe budget of $10 million, Oscar-nominated costume designer Patricia Field at least gives armchair fashionistas much to ogle. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., R, 146 minutes)