“The Women” is “Sex and the City” without the sex, without the bitchy edge. That’s not to say it isn’t the chickier of the two “chick flicks,” 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.” That’s understandable because “The Women” is based on a 1930s Clare Booth Luce play and a 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.

Ryan is Mary, queen bee of her little circle of ladies who luncheon. She’s the sometime-clothing designer who married well and juggles family, charities and work. She has it all. Or so she thinks.

But gal pal Sylvie (Annette Bening), a magazine editor, gets a tip from a chatty manicurist at Saks. A “perfume girl” in the Manhattan store is having an affair with a married man. And he’s Mary’s husband.

Much kvetching ensues, as Sylvie tells the ever-pregnant Edith (Debra Messing) and lesbian writer friend Miriam (Jada Pinkett Smith). Should they tell? Should they keep Mary from finding out? That’ll never work.

“Murphy Brown” veteran Diane English adapted and directed “The Women,” and she gives her sitcom-vet supporting players the best lines. Candice Bergen is perfectly cast as Mary’s too-understanding, too-catty mom. She comments on a bad face-lift.

“She looks like she’s re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere!”

Or, “Don’t be bitter, Mary. It leads to Botox.”

But English has difficulty making this pleasant-enough confection hit all its marks. It’s a prim movie that only gets messy in a Messing childbirth scene, with hand-held camera, jumpy action and the cast really mixing it up.

Every other scene is static, too carefully lighted, to flatter actresses of a certain age. It’s a movie of one-shots, with the ladies staying in their flattering light, delivering their lines to someone who reacts to that clever line in the next one-shot.

Eva Mendes goes full va-va-voom as the “other woman.” Oscar winner and TV vet Cloris Leachman makes a funny housekeeper, and Debi Mazar steals her scenes as the gossipy manicurist who gives it all away.

Bening and Ryan are quite good, giving emotional heft to their women, one whose career is in jeopardy because the “hip” world is passing her by, the other whose husband has taken up with a young hottie. * * *

The Women

Director: Diane English

Cast: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, Eva Mendes, Cloris Leachman, Candice Bergen

Running Time: 1:52

Rating: PG-13; language, sexual situations, some drug use

Where: In wide release, showtimes Pages 28-29