“The Women” is “Sex and the City” without edge. That’s not to say it isn’t the chickier of the two “chick pictures,” with better actors trying their hand at the same sitcom-polished sort of patter.

But the “good girls” of “The Women” feel a little old-fashioned next to the bad girls of SATC, understandable since “Women” is based on a 1930s Clare Booth Luce play and 1939 film.

After years of being the most talked-about remake in Hollywood, with many an actress (Julia Roberts, for one) trying to get it on the screen, “The Women” returns as a Meg Ryan production and Meg Ryan vehicle, a somewhat updated take on girl-bonding and the generational wars that “the younger, other woman” can stir up in a marriage or in the workplace.

Some of the characters also turn out some gems in the script, about feminine spirit and ambition that “shrinks to fit”.

This is a movie world without men, which, considering how lacking the lads were in “Sex and the City,” probably wasn’t a bad move.

But “bad” is what’s in short supply in “The Women.” It’s not 1939 anymore, and while human nature and female nature haven’t changed, attitudes certainly have.

This is like catching up on the gossip with an old friend who’s too nice to really dish the dirt.

By Roger Moore / McClacthy Tribune