I’ll get straight to the point. As a bloke, I’m almost ashamed to say this but it really is rather good. The Oulu premiere of Sex and the City was literally packed. The main contingent was groups of (possibly single?) young girls, many of whom had dressed-up in single, New York style costumes for the occasion. Some appeared to have come in groups of four, each trying to be one of the foursome, and in one case one of them had probably dyed themselves ‘Miranda’ just for the occasion. And then there were the blokes, always with their girlfriends or wives, making a point of NOT crying during the parts of the film where you could actually hear people weeping and trying as hard as possible to look like they weren’t enjoying it.  

But, if you’ve been forced by your wife to watch the series three times over, this is, I have to to say, really worth going to see. It’s genuinely funny – and I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but Charlotte’s ‘stomach trouble’ is a stroke of genius! It delves into the inevitable themes of infidelity and relationship breakdown but in slightly modified ways in comparison to the series. And, perhaps most interestingly of all, it shows us a whole new kind of relationship. Sex and the City has always been about ‘relationships’ (of course!) but these have been sexual relationships and fairly equal friendships. The movie breaks new ground by looking at a more complicated relationship – the unequal relationship between an employer and her employee and how this can develop into a kind of friendship but, possibly, still can’t ever quite do that.

I was expecting this movie to disappoint like the Simpsons movie. There are so many things the writers could have done to spoil this but didn’t – there were no constant in-jokes and references for Sex and the City anoraks (you could probably get something out of this without having seen the series because the characters are all properly developed and this includes, especially, the new character who I found the most interesting of all), and there are no tired celebrity appearances to turn it into a parody of itself.  

I guess I was slightly let down that nobody died – as Cynthia Nixon (that’s ‘Miranda’ the lawyer and mother who goes out with a bar tender called ‘Steve’) publicly said that somebody would. Some of the acting was less than brilliant and it was slightly annoying – during the jokes – that the subtitling would come up in blocks meaning that the audience would burst out laughing about two seconds before the joke was completed (as they were obviously reading it and not listening to it) meaning that those of us purely listening to it couldn’t hear the joke! I’m not sure what lessons about ‘life’ we’re meant to take from this movie. It may well be that women will leave men if they don’t get sufficient attention, men will have affairs if their women don’t give them sufficient ‘attention,’ don’t try too hard and what you want will probably happen and, as Carrie realises, ‘love is the best label.’  

After the movie, I went to Bisketti to try one of these ‘Cosmopolitans’ that they have in Sex and the City. This was a mistake. It was bright pink, presented in a very girly glass and, as I was given it, some drunk, punk-bikers sat down next to me and demanded to know what I was playing at. I told them I’d just been to see Sex and the City because my wife wanted to and we wanted to try the cocktail that they talk about in it. I added that I much prefer beer . . . and after that everything was okay and they just wanted to practice their English.

 Four stars out of Five

Director: Michael Patrick King; Writers: Candace Bushnell, Michael Patrick King; Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Catrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, Candice Bergen, David Eigenberg, Evan Handler, Jason Lewis, Mario Cantone, Willi Garson

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