Consider yourself warned: there are spoilers for the Sex and the City movie below. But if you haven't seen the movie yet, do you really care?

I went to see the Sex and City movie last weekend. Adam accompanied me, with the graceful stoicism of an innocent man being led to his execution. I didn't quite understand his aversion to going to the movie - I had watched the show at home with him before and he enjoyed it well enough. But when we arrived I understood perfectly. Sex and the City is not something that should be enjoyed as part of a crowd. We were in the middle of a sold-out theater, full of women who had come to the movie in packs. They appeared to be mainly the sorts of women who don't seem to entirely understand that SATC is a fantasy, that the four characters should not be held up as a barometer for normality. I had encountered people like this during my summers at NYU, when girls from other colleges would come to take classes and live in the dorms. They all wanted to be like Carrie, wanted New York to be more romantic and accessible than it really was. They spent hundreds of dollars that they didn't have on shoes, because, well,
aren't we supposed to want shoes? It was troubling.

The women in the theater traded loud inanities until the theater sounded like it was filled with screaming baby chimpanzees. A woman behind us, who seemed to be in her early twenties and who, I gather, had only seen the edited version of the show on TBS, carried on loudly about the problem of gratuitous sex on television, and Adam and I tried to stifle our laughter. Another woman started dousing herself in perfume until we could barely breathe. Mercifully the movie began, and the projectionist jacked the volume way up; maybe the volume of the audience had been an issue at previous screenings, as well.

For the record: I enjoyed the first two hours of this movie. It wasn't as good as most of the rest of the series, but it was fun and it made me laugh out loud at times. As for the final half hour...I think I need to pretend it never happened if I'm ever to watch this show again without hurling a Susan Faludi book at the screen. I was angry at first, but now I've settled into a general bitterness that this inane, 1950s-throwback, anti-feminist wish-fulfillment crap is being served to us as the pinnacle of collective female culture in America. I acknowledge that Sex and the City has always been about men, even when it purported to be about women. But at least there was the general acknowledgment throughout the six seasons that there was nothing wrong with being single; that women had come far enough to be able to be picky; and that female companionship was always more of a sure thing. Now we get a Carrie who is so insanely self-loathing that she will actually consent to be a trophy wife to a douchebag? What the fuck?

The worst part was that her friends were just so flippin' thrilled to see her married to this guy. Way to betray the sisterhood, ladies. When my friend got cheated on, I vowed to kick the fucker square in the balls if I ever saw him again and that's a promise I plan to keep. Should we finally run into each other at, say, a state dinner or a cathedral, no matter - the bastard's getting a knee to the groin. I would expect as much of the hyper-exalted depiction of female friendships in this movie. I was glad Charlotte bitch-slapped him with the bouquet, but still.

Also - Samantha is fat? What-the-fuck-ever.