Monday, June 2, 2008

‘Fabulous!’

By Sarah Poulton

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been counting down the days to the “Sex and the City” movie premiere since its series finale in February 2004.

The foursome, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) entered my home via cable and DVD on a semi-regular basis and made me laugh, cry and hope that I never end up like them.

The HBO series, which ran from 1998 to 2004, celebrated cosmopolitans, life in New York and meaningless sex. As a 15-year-old girl whose mother did not approve of that sort of viewing, I had to wait a few years to catch the series that had women searching for their Mr. Big (Chris Noth). But when I finally did, I fell in love.

“Sex and the City,” written and directed by Michael Patrick King, opened across America Friday. Women of all ages­ — and six men ­— waited anxiously outside to secure a seat in my overcrowded, hometown movie theater in New Castle, Pa.

The film is set a few years after the finale. Samantha is busy with her beau, Jerry ‘Smith’ Jerrod (Jason Lewis) in Los Angeles, Miranda and her husband Steve Brady (David Eigenberg) are hardly in marital bliss, Charlotte is in heaven with her husband Harry Goldenblatt (Evan Handler) and Carrie and Big are happily apartment shopping.

In the midst of finding the perfect 5th Avenue apartment, Carrie and Big decide to get married to give her a sense of security in their relationship. At that moment, the ball starts rolling into a production full of laughs, tears and needless to say, sex.

While the movie is much more tame than the series — nudity-wise (far fewer breasts and only one penis), the f-bombs continue to fly rampantly out of the characters’ mouths. With children now added to the mix, words like “fuck” are creatively replaced with “color,” adding an element of entertainment for audience members with children.

King did a phenomenal job of updating religious viewers, and also a fair job of catching up people who may not be familiar with the fabulous foursome. The first three-or-so minutes of the film are essentially a review, so despite a few minor details, SATC virgins should not have too big of a problem following the storyline.

Short appearances by the girls’ gay best friends, Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) and Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone), were few and far between for my liking, but an interesting twist to their relationships came as a pleasant surprise.

Essentially, the movie was nothing more than an extended SATC episode, but a much needed and anticipated one. I have heard some gripes about the movie being too long, but any true SATC fan would disagree.

It gave closure to anyone who ever wondered what happened to the girls after the series finale left situations up in the air. Minor long-awaited questions are also answered, such as Big’s last name (we learn his first name in the series finale) and Samantha’s age (which a lady never tells).

After years of anxiously waiting and wondering, I can honestly agree with Samantha when she says, “It was fabulous!”