You may have heard about the impending release of the movie version of Sex and the City, the long-running HBO show about the travails of four women on the prowl in New York City. The show was actually quite inventive for a half-hour sitcom, since every episode managed to tell four separate stories in the course of 27 minutes, which is actually no small task (most sitcoms have one major plot and one minor plot per half hour). Sex and the City was compressed and therefore seemed to move like a freight train.

So it is horrifying to learn that the movie version of Sex and the City runs — get this — 2 hours and 25 minutes. That’s a whole lot of Kim Cattrall acting more like a drag queen than a woman. Way too much. Which reminds me of the comedian Mort Sahl’s line at the premiere of Otto Preminger’s movie version of Exodus, the story of Israel’s founding. As the movie hit the three-hour mark with no end in sight, Sahl stood up and shouted, “Otto! Let my people go!”

Sarah Jessica Parker! Let the women of America go!