Sex and the City

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I know sometimes I complain about getting the chick flicks, but this one I asked for. I think it’s only fair to reveal that I was a fan of the HBO show Sex and the City, and while I had my doubts about its big screen transition, I still wanted to see it.
It’s always a risk to take a successful TV show and create a movie version. Will it have the same tone as the series? Will the elapsed years be kind to the actors? Will the movie jump the shark where the show might not have?
But from the moment it started until it ended, I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from curving upwards. Afraid that other critics in the screening might see my stone-faced objectivity crack, I slumped in my seat and tried to stop smiling. By the end of the movie, I must have looked like I had some kind of palsy.
Bottom line: If you’re one of the millions of people who have been looking forward to this, you’ll be happy. If you never watched the show and just get dragged along, chances are you’ll enjoy the ride.
Sex/relationship columnist Carrie Bradshaw reminds us that most people come to New York looking for two things—labels and love. Both are easy to find in the Big Apple, but beware of the fakes that lurk everywhere.
When we last left our high-stepping quartet, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (aka John James Preston, played by Chris Noth) were ON in their on-again-off-again romance. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) had married Steve (David Eigenberg) and moved to outer space (Brooklyn) with their son. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Harry (Evan Handler) had adopted a little girl from China, and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) discovered that the love that lasts through chemo (Jerrod Smith, played by Jason Lewis) counts more than her previous body count.
Where they go in the movie is a Tiffany box to be unwrapped. I’m not going to spoil anything here. But needless to say, there are break-ups and make-ups, do-overs and makeovers.
The best thing about a movie like this is feeling that you’re visiting old friends. And they’re all here. Big, Steve, Harry, Smith, Sanford, Anthony, Enid, even Magda. Only one new character is introduced halfway through, with Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) as Carrie’s personal assistant.
We learn no big secrets here. Samantha is not the result of a remarkable gender reassignment. Carrie is not dying of lung cancer from all the ciggies she smoked. And Miranda and Charlotte haven’t been having a wild affair for the last ten years.
The characters stay true to form. While Carrie wants a really big closet instead of an engagement ring, Samantha would prefer a “ring with diamonds” to a “diamond ring.” Miranda wants to be a Superwoman, and Charlotte is just irrepressibly WASPy in a crazy multicultural way.
Every fan of the show identified with at least one of the characters, though perhaps fewer with maneater Samantha, whose rapacious appetites no one openly aspires to. The series had the ability to draw women together in friendship, not catty competition, and made us realize that in every one of us there is a little Miranda, a little Carrie, a little Samantha, and a little Charlotte (in my case, a lot of Charlotte).
Yes, Sex and the City is as sweet and tart as the signature cosmopolitan. And yes, often these women seem to have more dollars than sense. There are a few false notes, such as having to accept how much plastic surgery Candice Bergen seems to have had, and seeing horse-faced Parker look almost pretty at times. And when it clocks in at nearly two and a half hours, it only stands to reason that the second half might seem a little slow.
But fans of the show, female or male, will lap it up like the froth on a frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity on the Upper East Side.
Sex and the City is a love letter to its fans, and it teaches us to look past the labels of lover, wife, mother, and professional to the woman underneath. And that’s not fake.