“Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie” opens with Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and her bestie, Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), blundering into a fashion show. While ordinary latecomers might try a discreet entrance, bobbing and weaving as they scamper for seats, the constitutionally unmindful Eddy and Patsy stumble onto the catwalk, creating a distraction that forces everyone’s attention on them. What seems like mere table-setting — Eddy galumphing among the gazelles — is a sly declaration of intent in a happily self-conscious feature-length goof.

As it announces, “Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie” is the big-screen iteration of the BBC series created by Ms. Saunders that enjoyed an erratic run from 1992 to 2012. It’s basically more of the amusing, often very funny, occasionally wincing raucous same, with Eddy and Patsy as the brand-wearing and hard-partying — and hard-smoking, sometimes-snorting — irresistible fools whose adventures are as female-specific as Lucy and Ethel’s were decades earlier. The story this time hangs on Eddy’s efforts to revive her sagging public relations career, a slender narrative thread that Ms. Saunders adorns with bright bits, much like a string of Christmas lights.

The original “Absolutely Fabulous” was created by Ms. Saunders and originated in a 1990 skit that she did with her longtime comedy partner Dawn French on their show “French and Saunders.” (Ms. Saunders and Ms. French both worked as writers on the “Absolutely Fabulous” series.) Set in the wake of Margaret Thatcher, “Ab Fab” — as fans fondly call it — pivots on Eddy, a child of the 1960s turned hardly working ’90s businesswoman. Crucially, her time and energy are largely fixed on herself and other women, including her daughter, Saffron, or Saffy (Julia Sawalha), a frump in Dr. Huxtable sweaters and sensible shoes, who plays the superego scold to her mother’s irrepressible id.

Nothing if not period appropriate, at least in its early years, the show positioned Eddy and Patsy as avatars of a hilariously clueless, grasping materialism, while riffing on the likes of spiritualism, family life and pop culture. Complexly feminist, it reserved some of its most comically scabrous bits for the preposterous contradictions and hurdles facing women, as in the episode “Fat,” in which Eddy obsesses over her weight, vainly struggles to get into her too-tight clothes and aspirationally discusses fasting while nibbling on food. “Inside of me there’s a thin person just screaming to get out,” Eddy insists at one point. “Just the one, dear?” asks her mom (June Whitfield).

Crucial to the movie and series both is that they lampoon Eddy and Patsy even as they go after the world that made them, which allows you to giggle at the characters and lets them, more or less, have the last Champagne-soaked laugh. Their laughter may be self-delusional, but their unbreakable bond means that at least they’re clueless together. Their friendship remains intact in the movie, as does the show’s principal cast, its tossed-together feel, indifferent visuals and gaudy fashion. Except that now the sideshow hits the road, which allows Eddy and her second bananas (including her assistant, Bubble, played by Jane Horrocks) to leave her kitchen for the South of France.

Serviceably, at times awkwardly, directed by Mandie Fletcher, the movie skews softer than the series at its barbed best, partly because the celebrity culture that once provided such rich material has become just another ratings opportunity for the Kardashians. As in the series, the perfectly synced Ms. Saunders and Ms. Lumley receive some invaluable support (notably from Kathy Burke, an “Ab Fab” veteran) and manage to rise above the crowd of famous faces, which here includes Stella McCartney and Kate Moss. These A-listers function as human versions of Eddy and Patsy’s costly look-at-me accessories, which I guess makes Jon Hamm its Birkin bag.

“Absolutely Fabulous” is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult companion). Drinking, drugging, shopping. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes.

Credit:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/movies/abfab-absolutely-fabulous-review.html?_r=0