DVDs of the week

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Carrie and crew insult their followers

Poor grasp of working-class Londoners: Cassandra's Dream

Likeable rip-off of My Best Friend's Wedding: Made Of Honour

A very human portrait of a brutal ruler: Mongol

A crackling, fizzing set: Gina Yashere

This week's DVDs: The over-hyped Sex and the City, Cassandra's Dream with Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell playing brothers with dodgy cockney accents and a skillfully filmed movie about feared Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan.

DVD OF THE WEEK
Sex And The City: The Movie
Entertainment In Video, 15, £22.99 (single disc); £24.99 (double disc)
**
The over-hyped hit of the summer now makes an overpriced appearance on DVD.

Four years after the Sex And The City series ended, Carrie is preparing to marry Big, Miranda and Steve are having problems and Samantha is bored with LA.

Charlotte is happily married, so escapes the self-pity virus rapidly infecting the rest of the gang.

While the TV series had a knowing approach to its blatant consumerism, this big-screen spin-off bows down to its corporate sponsors with reverence and repetitiveness.

Confident in the blind loyalty of its fan base, this patronises with a lazy script and a hypocritical closing message about image obsession.

It's positively vicious about anti-fur protesters, marginalises its token ethnic character (Jennifer Hudson) and takes Samantha completely seriously when she complains of being fat.

There are laughs and cute moments but beneath its guilty pleasures, this is an insult to the series' many intelligent followers.

Extras: Single disc - director's commentary. Double disc - extended feature, director's commentary, A Conversation With Sarah Jessica Parker, Fergie singing the theme tune.

Anna Smith

Cassandra's Dream
Optimum Home Entertainment, 12, £17.99
**
If Match Point proved Wood Allen's ineptitude with upperclass British dialogue, this indicates a similarly poor grasp of working-class Londoners.

Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play brothers Ian and Terry, a fact that's hard to ignore given that they call each other 'Ian' and 'Terry' in almost every sentence. In bad cockney accents.

However, the actual story isn't bad.

The cash-strapped brothers approach their wealthy Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson).

He's happy to help, in return for one little favour: murdering a man who's threatening to blow the whistle on his malpractice.

Dark comedy follows as Ian and Terry bumble their way towards an amateur hit job.

There's an attempt to deal with the psychological implications of the request, and a hint that Colin Farrell could have been quite good if allowed to speak in his own voice.

But Allen's approach to dialogue is as blundering as the brothers themselves: the earnest, pointed monologues bear little relation to anything you've heard outside a school play and the result is too distracting for words.

Extras: None

AS

Made Of Honour
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 12, £19.99
***
A womaniser falls for his female best friend in this largely likeable romantic comedy.

Tom (Patrick Dempsey) only realises that Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) is the woman for him when she gets engaged to Scottish duke Colin (Kevin McKidd).

Given the coveted role of maid of honour, Tom attempts to show Hannah just how perfect he is in the run-up to her nuptials, while simultaneously trying to sabotage them.

It's a rip-off of My Best Friend's Wedding, granted, but Dempsey and Monaghan are a cute match, enlivening the already spirited dialogue and sparking off each other.

The film is at its strongest in New York, especially when Tom's father (the late Sydney Pollack) marries yet another gold-digger.

However, when the wedding party heads off to bonny Scotland, it seems the script left its wit at JFK: stereotypes abound and the story ends up moving towards a predictable conclusion.

Extras: Enjoyable commentary from the British director, Paul Weiland, making-of doc, production design feature, deleted scenes, trailers.

AS

Mongol: The Rise To Power Of Genghis Khan
Universal, 15, £19.99
****
Genghis Khan was one of the most feared rulers in history - but he was also once a cute little boy, as the opening of this Oscarnominated epic seeks to remind us.

Not that the young Genghis was backwards in coming forwards: he defied his father in his choice of future wife, then vowed bloody revenge when his father was killed.

Blood spills aplenty when Genghis grows up and battles for supremacy amid warring Mongol tribes in the 12th century.

But this remains a very human portrait of a man who, here, struggles with moral dilemmas, and loves his wife and children to boot.

The battle scenes are skilfully filmed and the whole film is visually striking, capturing the harsh, yet beautiful, Mongolian landscape in all its glory.

Extras: Making-of doc.

AS

Gina Yashere: Skinny B*tch
Laughing Stock, 15, £14.99
***
The past year and a half has seen big things happen to Gina Yashere: she lost 4st (25kg) in ten months, thanks to a spell of colonic irrigation in Thailand.

Then the newly size-12 comedian was chosen to be the first Briton to appear on US TV stand-up show Def Comedy Jam.

She later ditched north London for LA, bemoaning the lack of TV opportunities on these shores.

Three years ago, she was also diagnosed with lupus, the arthritic effects of which are visible - her movements are a little stiffer, her knuckles puffer.

All this provided interesting fuel for this Hackney Empire show, her typical ballsy spirit making for plenty of belly laughs as she details her experiences.

There is some well-observed humour in her material, which is mostly along race-related lines (black people aren't animal lovers, she says: 'The only time you'll ever see a black person at the vet is if they've had to wait too long for the GP.'); only the crowd-working occasionally misfires.

This is a crackling, fizzing set from this all-or-nothing woman, who is now a rarity on the live British scene.

Extras: Backstage featurettes, messing around with music act Indigo Brown, audience voxpops.

Sharon Lougher

 

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