Love.
Love..
Love...
Love..
Love.

Carrie debates the opener while brooding her most recent predictable romantic drama with Big.

Yes, I just returned from the midnight showing of Sex & the City. Returned to my own Carrie-esque moment. My glasses aren't as stylish and I'm typing on a MacBook Pro (not her PowerBook), but all the same I'm typing and sipping pomegranate juice straight from the bottle. Alone in a single bedroom apartment during the wee hours of the morning listening to the thoughts in my head.

While awkwardly poised over an unfortunate puddle covering the ground surrounding my car door (I was wearing Miu Mius; the next move was not to be taken lightly.), I realized that I was surprised to have loved the movie. I am, after all, the lone person on the planet who enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (I thought it was fun! I expected nothing more. Which is to say, I expected nothing better.) Who am I to feel any sort of rights to review, really?

But here I am. Brooding. Having actually enjoyed something I traveled and waited hours for. Though the writing served up plenty of bad puns, it was the best extended episode one could have asked for to conclude the girls' stories. The pacing was good, humor was well-interspersed, and I'm sure the producers are happy to have gotten all that product placement in.

Six seasons. Four women. One city. Forty-one men. One woman. One adorable Chinese adoptee.
Annoying Carrie. Annoying Charlotte. Relatable Miranda. Refreshing Samantha.
I laughed. I clapped. I almost cried a couple of times. (I also wondered on a couple of occasions why there were so many straight men in the house, but that's not for me to ask.)

There's a lot of fugly going on in the costume and accessories department *cough* Jennifer Hudson's purse *cough* but there's also definitely a lot of high fashion going on in the styling. You still get that sense of "How do these women actually afford these things?" coupled with a lot of "OMG I want to be her friend..." And The City - Oh, the city. I don't know why, but I always have a soft spot for stories that make the place as much as a character as any of the actors. By no surprise, the focus of the movie is all about the women. Men don't act much in the movie as much as they just fulfill their roles. There isn't a whole lot of character development to be expected of anyone in the film. They all do exactly what you'd expect them to in order to patch things in up in a package of two and a quarter hours.

I don't know why I feel so satisfied right now. Perhaps it is because I'm very conscientious about where I am at the moment - in my love life, in my job search, in my friendships, in my family - and I am really happy about all of it. For the past week I've had panicky bouts of choice overload, but after seeing a cinematic production solely dedicated to neurotic, histrionic women, I feel centered. Relative to their drama, I am in a great place. (I will probably buy the DVD.)

Fans of the series, go see the movie. Non-fans of the movies, it's not as insufferable as you think it might be. In either case, you should enjoy this "final episode of Sex & the City." Christina does a fucking impeccable imitation of Samantha there. Lemme just also take a moment to say that Candance Bushnell's book is not as sugary and glamorous as the series or the movie now in theaters. If you can't handle overdoses of magenta, the book may be more your style than you'd ever realized.

Careful before you tread forward, spoiler alert.

I don't want to sound like a superficial, fashion-obsessed ninny, but what was up with half of the clothes in the freakin' wardrobe? I did love Miranda's black plastic chain and gold metal piece necklace. But not most of whatever they threw on SJP.

Jennifer Hudson did a fantastic job in Dreamgirls, but in SATC, she had me rollin' my eyes. The role she was cast in was mammy-turned-assistant, so maybe she just wasn't taking it seriously - But still, she was incredibly lame as a Computer Science graduate assisting some sex columnist. SATC's efforts to be ethnically diverse always made my face screw up in WTF.

Steeeeve! Whyyyyy!? His indiscretion and the girls' eventual forgiveness made me wonder at what point a cheater is forgivable. I don't want to dwell on it much more or else I really will sound like a SATC monologue, but really. When Miranda cried out "You broke us!" I almost cried!

True to what she shared in her interviews, Kim Cattrall's Samantha does not "end up" staying in a relationship with Smith. I'm actually really glad they stuck to that, but shouldn't she at least have gotten to get it on with Dante?

Dante's Girl #1 is named Monica Mayhem. Gives me great ideas for a porn star name of my own...