One must automatically give props to Sex and the City for doing its part to dispel the notion that women, particularly older women, don’t go to the movies as much as teenage males. Unfortunately, I think that’s the limit of the film’s appeal, as well as any one else from an age or gender bracket that counts themselves fans of the original HBO television series. People like me, meanwhile, lie somewhere in between. As I’ve said before, I was a casual viewer, but I never made SATC appointment television. In fact I’ve barely even thought about it in the last four years since it’s been off the air.

So keeping that in mind, I went into the movie not feeling particularly thrilled, but not with a sense of dread. The story picks up about four years following the finale, with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristen Jones) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) all happy and content with their personal and professional lives. The main focus is the pending nuptials of Carrie and her on-again/off-again flame Mr. Big (Chris Noth); an extravagant affair at the New York Public Library with 200 guests. Of course the contentment of all four of the ladies is short-lived and they are forced to deal with the fallout.

At nearly two and a half hours long, the SATC movie is almost exactly five times as long as an episode of the TV show. Aside from a brief montage at the beginning, there’s really no introduction to the series or the characters so immediately a tone is set that this one’s for the fans. Having said that though, it’s not like the movie is inaccessible, and I look at it this way: newbies coming in won’t recognize the fact that the main plotlines of the film are actually warmed over leftovers from the series. Carrie and Big have trouble committing? No way! Miranda loses faith in her relationship with Steve? Impossible! Samantha reclaims her wandering eye? Didn’t see that coming! (Oh, first double entendre.)

But there is something charming about the movie, and especially in seeing this core group of women reunited again. And miraculously, Parker actually made me care about Carrie for once, for the first time I actually see the appeal. Plus, unlike the three others, Parker actually gets something substantive to chew on, even if it is her character’s umpteenth break-up with the same guy. Cattrall infuses life back into Samantha, but she’s by far saddled with the weakest arc. She was probably the most interesting of the quartet, but what is she offered: she’s bored with monogamy and horny for the hunk next door? I think I saw this one… at least 20 times.

Davis, perhaps in direct reference to Charlotte’s sunny disposition, simply has to contend with deprogramming her adopted daughter from repeating the word ‘sex’ at random, while finally getting her dream and becoming pregnant. Although she does get some good lines in, especially her practice response to what she’d say if she were to ever run into Big again after he leaves Carrie at the alter. Nixon tries her best to really push Miranda’s strife with her cheating husband, but the story seems to go on a bit too long and more or less ends as expected.

The sole new character is Carrie’s recently-hired assistant Louise played by Dreamgirls Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson. Now Hudson’s taken a lot of flack for being a “poor actress” and that her awards and accolades had been a “fluke.” I don’t think that, but honestly, it’s not like there’s a lot of character for Hudson to hang a portrayal on. In fact, the guy wearing the pink heals in his interview with Carrie was more interesting and he was just a cliché really. Usually when you introduce a new character into a long-standing franchise, it’s to make complex histories easy to digest for the audience, but I’m not sure what Louise’s function was supposed to be.

In terms of audience reaction, I think that the fans will be ever so grateful for a return visit from some of their favourite fictional friends. Their men will sit their begrudgingly and pretend that they can’t find something to like in this while discernable viewers will enjoy a surprisingly light and breeze 150 minutes without investing SATC with a kind of quality that makes it akin to the second coming.