Only then, after six seasons as one of the most popular shows on TV, it all came to an end amid tabloid stories of in-fighting and bitchiness. Rather than appearing in magazines as the perfect role-models for aspiring professional clothes-horses, we started being subject to long-lens shots of cellulite and sagginess. The glamour had gone – and so had our careers.

Oh yes, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) may have continued to appear in a few films, but they were all fairly bland stuff, and never troubled the box-office. But what about the rest of us? Sex-mad, sultry Samantha (Kim Cattrall) was last seen playing Harry Potter’s dowdy mum in a period TV movie, and hit her fifties two years ago. Cutesy Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has spent most of the last few years voicing a cartoon spider on a US kids’ TV show when not playing somebody’s mother in bad movies. Sassy lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has merely been cropping up in guest spots on US TV shows, despite showing some early promise playing Eleanor Roosevelt opposite Kenneth Branagh’s FD Roosevelt in a halfway decent US TV movie.

So despite all being such idols back at the turn of the millennium, it all seems to have gone wrong for us girls. Now fortysomething (and fiftysomething), no matter how much we may have tried to show everyone that you don’t need to be married by thirty to have a good life, and as much as we thought we’d proved that you can be a woman approaching middle age and still be sexy, smart, desirable and in control, it turns out we were wrong. Because in the world of celebrity, if you’re female then age and looks still matter – and after our show came to a close and we had to venture out into the real world without the benefit of expert stylists and make-up artists, the fickle world of film and TV took one look and decided we were pretty much past it.

Hell, if the Spice Girls can do a comeback, why can’t we? Yes, those pop star precursors of the maids from Manhattan may be a decade younger than us, but hell – they all managed to put aside their well-publicised differences and get along long enough to put together a sell-out comeback tour, didn’t they? Surely we can all forget our differences for the few weeks it takes to shoot a movie to fleetingly revive our fame, bring in the old fans, and top up the pension funds?

And so it’s back to more of the same for a while. Carrie still trying to get hitched to Mr Big; Samantha still eyeing up men young enough to be her kids; Miranda still being paranoid about her bartender boyfriend’s fidelity; and Charlotte still trying to get pregnant after all these years. Will it be final closure – or will we all be back again in a few years, now all in our fifties, and all still acting as if we were spoiled teenagers? And, more importantly, will the fans still care?

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No, neither Indy nor the films in which he appeared were overly original – but they were never intended to be, having been deliberately designed as a hybrid of James Bond, the Victorian adventure stories of H Rider Haggard, and the Saturday morning film serials so popular during the 30s, 40s and 50s.

The success of this formula speaks for itself – there’s the $1.1 billion the three original films pulled in at the box office during the 1980s, and then (to further rub it in) the untold additional millions that have been generated by the video and DVD sales and rentals, the four theme park rides, the countless toys, the 50-odd books, the comics, the 28 episodes of the epic TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and sundry other pieces of merchandise that have been snapped up by eager fans during his 27-year existence.

Yet, despite this vast success, and despite Indy’s continued place as one of the best-loved film characters of all time, the idea of his return to the big screen has filled his fans with dread.

If you look to the tabloid coverage, this has all been thanks to the return of Harrison Ford in the lead, and the fact that he’s not only now old enough for a bus pass but also, were he British, for a state pension, having hit 65 last year. The world’s most successful film star during his 1980s heyday, he’s also not had a genuine box office hit to his name since 1994′s The Fugitive, and is these days mostly seen sporting an ill-considered earring while chaperoning girlfriend Calista “Ally McBeal” Flockhart down various red carpets. From being two of the coolest film characters of all time – Indiana Jones and Star Wars’ Han Solo – he’s become the epitome of the mid-life crisis, like your dad dancing at a wedding.

And then, of course, there’s George Lucas, an undoubted genius as the man who invented both Indiana Jones and Star Wars. But since his revival of the Star Wars franchise with 1999′s really rather poor The Phantom Menace, Lucas has become a hate figure for an entire generation. Because for anyone – especially male – now around 28 to 40 years-old, Star Wars was a vital part of their childhood, and Lucas’ long-hoped for revival of the franchise was widely considered such a disappointment that many of those cherished memories of pretend lightsaber battles with classmates have now been forever sullied with images of Jar-Jar Binks screaming out “Meesa sorry!” or a child Darth Vader (the stuff of nightmares when we were children) going “Yippee!”

There was a 16-year gap between the last of the original Star Wars films and 1999′s disappointing revival, and it has now been 19 years since the last of the original Indy movies. The similarity in timing, combined with Harrison Ford seeming far too old and uncool for such an action-heavy role, and the fact that many fans of the films hated the early-1990s Young Indiana Jones TV series means it should be little wonder that fans are desperately worried that Lucas may have produced something that will sully yet another batch of nostalgic childhood reminiscences. With the plot and action kept tightly under wraps right up until the release, the only way to find out is to go see for yourself. And let’s face it – you’re going to. This is Indy, after all, and Steven Spielberg’s still in the director’s chair – they surely can’t have mucked it up. Can they?

The only trouble is, despite the deadly serious subject-matter, some comic book sceptics will still be put off by the fact that the events depicted have been anthropomorphised, with Jews portrayed as mice and Germans as the cats persecuting them. Even though this is the last comic you’d want children to read, so harrowing is the subject-matter, the presence of animals wearing clothes will always make the more stubborn insist that it can only be for kids (which conveniently ignores the existence of George Orwell’s Cold War parable Animal Farm, but never let fact get in the way of a good prejudice).

And so we turn to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, of which this film is an adaptation. No animals dressed as humans here – just stark black and white drawings of people going about their lives. Yes, they may look slightly… cartoony – but rather than acting to lessen the seriousness of the subject-matter, these friendly, jolly visuals become a welcome softener as the story progresses, aiding our ability to identify with rather than alienating us from the main character.

Because while Persepolis may not deal with something as powerful and serious as the Holocaust, it nonetheless does cover one of the most momentous events of modern history – a tragic period of upheaval, the effects of which are still being felt (and are arguably becoming increasingly important as time goes on).

Persepolis is the autobiographical story of Satrapi’s experiences as a young woman growing up in Iran following the 1979 Iranian Revolution’s introduction of militant Islamism to the Middle East. For a young girl – especially a young girl from an educated, upper-middle class background – the sudden introduction of strict interpretations of Islamic law and the suppression of women’s rights was a truly world-changing event.

But, of course, it was not – and is not – as simple as that. The impact of the Iranian Revolution is still reverberating to this day with the ongoing stand-off between the USA and Iran, and constant allegations that the Iranian regime is sponsoring Islamist terrorism throughout the Middle East and the world. But within Iran itself, despite hard-line religious leaders overseeing affairs, there are countless strange contradictions, with a booming (if sometimes censored) artistic scene, women being allowed far more freedom than in the likes of Saudi Arabia, and a level of development – in urban areas at least – among the highest in the region.

Where Persepolis excels, is in humanising this whole insanely complex affair, removing the focus on the endemic arguments over the politics – with every man, woman and their dog having an opinion on Middle Eastern politics and the nature of Islam these days, we’re surely all somewhat bored of it now – and showing what daily life is like under these regimes in a deeply affecting, heart-warming way. Both timely and strangely, given the subject-matter, enjoyable, never mind reading the paper or buying serious books promising in-depth analysis of the political situation – in Persepolis you will get the best background on modern Iran that you will find pretty much anywhere, with this faithful, affecting and Oscar-nominated film version more than doing justice to the comics. Go see, and then go buy the comics. You won’t regret it.

Horror movies revel in the idea of pretty young girls – usually in skimpy clothes and screaming – being chased by psychotic maniacs. They’re an essential part of the genre, taking the shower scene from Psycho to its most extreme logical conclusion in a veritable orgy of heaving-bosomed women running around looking terrified. Doubtless, there have been thousands of essays about men’s rape fantasies written by wannabe psychologists and militant feminists world-wide about the strange thing this says about the predominantly male audiences for such films – but the important point is that such movies can be a good career move for a young actress. Just take a look at Jamie Lee Curtis – she got her big break in the ultimate slasher movie Halloween back in 1978 and, after a movie career that’s seen her appear in over 50 films, she now goes by the title Lady Hayden-Guest, with a husband who sits in the House of Lords. Not bad.

But does Jessica Alba really need a career boost? Especially one from a film that seems to be a remake not just of a 2002 movie, readily available on DVD, but also of the dire 1981 horror movie The Hand? Because in that Michael Caine-starring early effort from director Oliver Stone – one he’d doubtlessly like expunged from his CV – everyone’s favourite cockney Knight of the Realm gets a hand transplant (don’t ask) that turns out to have some rather nasty side-effects. In The Eye we see a young blind girl get, well… eye transplants with a nasty side-effect and so the mystery of whose eyes they were becomes the heart of the film, as Alba starts to see horrible visions of death and destruction.

It’s all perfectly fine horror film fair and done adequately. But other than the fact that an English-language remake is entirely unnecessary – what’s wrong with the original with subtitles? – the real question is why has Alba bothered? She was voted “Sexiest Woman in the World” by lads mag FHM last year, she’s appearing in the successful Fantastic Four superhero franchise, and she put in a good turn in cult favourite Sin City, the sequel of which she’s also due to crop up next year. With her career going well, the last thing she needs is to risk a horror movie flop. Lucky for her, this isn’t a bad effort – but it’s not a good one either. If she really wants to boost her already healthy career, she should look for something a bit more original.

Let’s face it, romantic comedies are pretty much always aimed almost exclusively at the fairer sex, with precious little in the way of concessions to the long-suffering boyfriends and husbands that end up dragged along to the cinema. That’s more than fair enough, of course, films should always know their audience and try to appeal to the target market as much as they can. Few men would want their brain-dead action films spoiled by the inclusion of too much lovey-dovey romance. Who could picture action stars like Arnie, Sly or (especially) Chuck Norris getting all romantic?

But every now and then, you get a genre film that manages to transcend the usual target audience. The likes of Shrek or Ratatouille have shown that animated children’s films can also get adults out to the cinema in droves.

Big-budget sci-fi blockbusters like the Star Wars films have from time to time managed to bring in female crowds as well as male. Woody Allen – in his prime, at least – managed the rare trick of getting men keen to go to the movies to see films about relationships, life and love.

Fool’s Gold seems to be a deliberate attempt to get men as well as women popping along to the cinema. This is largely thanks to superficially trying to position McConaughey in a similar role to his Indiana Jones-style turn in 2005′s Sahara – that of daredevil treasure hunter. The only trouble is, having an Indiana Jones as the male character in a romantic comedy could prove a problem. It would instantly jettison any of the pretence these films must have that the two leads aren’t going to get together, because he’d simply be too good for any woman to resist.

And so McConaughey becomes a bizarre cross between a surfer-style slacker and Indiana Jones. He’s an obsessive treasure-hunting waste of space with whom it’s all but impossible to sympathise as Hudson dumps and divorces him at the start of the movie. Cue the usual implausible set-ups as the pair gradually – and inevitably – start to get back together, this time aided by the promise of a vast fortune in sunken gold bullion.

With the misjudged attempt to bring in the blokes through a poorly thought-out male lead character, the filmmakers have ended up with a movie that will disappoint both their key audiences. For the men, there’s nothing to really associate with, and for women the supposed object of desire is a waster with little going for him bar McConaughey’s rugged good looks. Had Hudson’s on-off boyfriend Owen Wilson been cast instead, they may have been on to something, but McConaughey simply can’t put across the charm that’s vital for such a role.

The end result is harmless enough stuff – perfectly fine for a girls’ night in should it crop up on the telly or there’s nothing better at the rental shop – but it’s hard to see anyone dashing to the multiplex for Fool’s Gold. It is, in other words, an aptly-named film – superficially it could look good, but on closer examination it turns out to be worthless.