Unified by Carrie and Company

Going to see the Sex and the City movie is a gender-based ceremony not unlike guys watching the Super Bowl. It's an event that cuts across age and class and family hierarchy. A woman whom I work with who's in her twenties is waiting until she returns home to the East Coast so she can go see it with her mother. I saw it with my son's girlfriend. In L.A. when it opened I sat behind a jovial group of mothers and daughters who were having dinner after attending one of the first showings. A friend knows a woman who was desolate at the thought of interviewing Henry Kissinger and missing the big Sex and the City opening gala that her friends were all going to attend. Four lesbian friends of mine all went together to see it as soon as it hit town. This is not a movie--it's a phenomenon.

It's completely beside the point whether the movie is good or bad--whether it's relationship-porn or a two-and-a-half hour fashion show. We've already seen everything that could possibly happen over the five or was it six seasons of HBO. The movie is simply dessert--we don't need it but who can resist it? And like any guilty pleasure, the real fun comes in talking about it afterward.

Was Carrie's hair brown or blonde at the end of the movie? Was the flower dress in the opening credits the best one of the hundreds that she wore throughout the whole spectacle? What in god's name happened to Samantha's boyfriend over the past few years to make him age so horribly? Does Kim Catterall really have the pooch of flab that appears in the final scenes or is it a fat suit? (Not to say that most of us wouldn't die for that tiny little millimeter of bulge.) Was the catwalk scene really the best one in the whole movie? And has Big ever been seen reading a book in any of his appearances in any medium?

The saddest thing I have heard in the past three weeks is a woman I know saying she would probably see this movie by herself because she couldn't think of anyone to go with her. Trust me, this isn't something to watch by yourself--after all, that's why so many bars are packed solid with guys on Super Bowl Sunday.