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City Living

One of my favorite New York nights, after being there close to a dozen years, was having a houseful of friends over to watch the last episode of Sex and the City.

We saw the film yesterday afternoon. I hadn't read any of the reviews and avoided the spoilers because I didn't want to know who dies, who loses a leg, who breaks a nail, and who does or doesn't get/stay married before I saw it (although I did have a dream the other night that Miranda killed herself by jumping in front of an F train ... which would have been tragic and dark and fabulous, even though she's always been my favorite).

So now I know how it all gets tied up. It's not the best film in the world, but you know what, I never expected it to be. And I think that the reviewer from the New York Times has a few issues she needs to work through. Bitter much?

It was predictable, it was charming, and it might even be a bit of fluff. It wasn't even all that well-written; where were all the snappy one-liners? But it was a beautiful postcard of New York, and made me awfully nostalgic about living there. Dirty Sexy Money (also a bit of fluff, but not nearly as predictable) does the same thing, so maybe I just miss the idea of the crisp, technicolor New York that can be found if you have loads and loads of money.

My most interesting takeaway was how much I liked one of the characters this time, she might even have been my favorite yesterday which is curious because during the run of the show she was by far my least favorite. And maybe I liked her better now because, while she was still the same character, she'd grown a bit. Three of them were pretty much the same four years later, one of them seemed to have grown up a little.

Three random snippets that won't give anything away before I babble on ...

1. I clapped when Joanna Gleason unexpectedly came on screen. People (including Larry) thought I was crazy.

2. I would have liked to have seen more cameos by New York actor-type people (see above), but wonder if that would have made it too gimmicky.

3. "Emotional cutter" could be one of my new favorite phrases and I was the only person in the theater who laughed when it was said.

Potential spoilers after the jump.

I tend to group people I know into two categories. The ones who are doing the same thing they've been doing for the past 5, 10, 20 (insert your own time frame here) years and the ones who seem to be on a journey, whose lives have some kind of an arc. Granted, most people I know are in the second category, but there are some people who have found their groove and, for whatever reasons (comfort, security, fear), have stayed there.

For the most part, three of the SATC girls were in the same place we'd left them, acting pretty much the same way they would have during the series. Okay, in the series Samantha would have been banging Dante the first time Smith turned up late, but she was still pretty much the same.

On the other hand, Charlotte rocked. She still had her good-girl moral superiority, but it didn't seem as annoying as it used to. And sure, she was still the most high strung, but she'd mellowed a bit and seemed more honest about her ridiculous chocolate pudding, fear-of-losing-everything, something-bad-is-going-to-happen neuroses.

And she gave Carrie one of the best lines of the film, You shit your pants this year, maybe you're done.

Gosh, one could even say Charlotte had grown up. For as much as she wanted Miranda to forgive Steve (awww, Steve ... we love Steve), she would NEVER have forgiven Harry or Trey for a similar indiscretion back in the day.

So good for Charlotte and her arc. And good for everybody at SATC. Despite what the critics say, I think audiences will flock to it and they'll get the fairy tale they're looking for.