Sex & The City Fever

In 2004, I joined two girlfriends for a farewell party to see off four of our closest friends: the Sex & The City girls. Knocking back Cosmos, we enjoyed the final thrilling circuits of a rollercoaster ride full of emotion, laughter and tears.  The series had been in our lives for six years: when it started I was 23, living in London, a single girl about town, looking for love, passion, excitement. Which is why the sexploits of Carrie and friends had me drooling in anticipation of each new episode. SATC offered counsel to girls like me and uplifting mantras to chant when hot new men revealed themselves to be cads. When Miranda learned that when men don't call you it means "He's just not that into you!" she was grateful of the simplicity of the explanation -- and we were too. After 4 years, the new SATC movie stages a reunion between fans of the series and our favourite ballsy New York gals. But can it work? Or are we all just too much older, too fragmented, too different to be brought together again? Take me -- the girl about town is now a married mum that's decamped to the country. How can I relate to Carrie now? I went to the movie feeling excited to find out what had happened to her and the rest of the fabulous four... I found out that they, like me, are a tad more serious, have a few more wrinkles and a bit more flab (okay not SJP). Unlike me, they have inexplicably fabulous wardrobes (how much do writers and lawyers get paid in New York?). But three of the girls (or scriptwriters?) seemed stuck in a loop repeating the same old mistakes (or story lines). And, whereas the series SATC was about "sex" and "The City", the film has little of either. The characters' sex lives and New York fade into the background, while the film's spotlight is on Carrie. I wanted more, more, more juicy details about the lives of the other three and I left the cinema with my appetite not sated (not counting the bag of Butterkist popcorn I gobbled). An entertaining film, yes.  But, for hard-core SATC fans, I'm not sure the encore is worth the wait.