lot here -- Carrie and longtime love Mr. Big are in bed together. A passionate interlude? Nah, they're just reading. Except they both need glasses, and there's only one pair. Sharing reading glasses in bed? These two, who fogged up the small screen with their sexual chemistry during the TV series? Yes, and that small moment is a sweet acknowledgment that they've both aged.
As, of course, have we.
The series may be alive and well on TBS reruns. But it's been a full decade since "Sex and the City" premiered on HBO, bringing us sex columnist Carrie, her three gal pals, and their lustful urban quest for love, good sex and even better clothes.
That means these 30-somethings who spent six seasons drinking and trysting with abandon are now 40-somethings, with a couple characters even flirting with 50. And cynics are asking: Can they pull this off? How does "Sex and the City" get around the age issue?
In interviews with The Associated Press over the weekend, the cast answered that question unanimously: It doesn't. Age is not avoided here. It is embraced and even savored, like, well, a nice, cool Cosmopolitan.
"When we started cobbling together the movie, we knew there was only one road we could take," said Sarah Jessica Parker, who stars as Carrie and co-produced the film. "You cannot pretend we're 32, still running around New York drinking with liberty and looking for interesting sexual partnerships. It would have been vulgar. None of us wanted to do that."
And so the film begins not where the series left off four years ago, but in the present. Carrie, now in her early 40s, is now a contributing editor to Vogue and a best-selling author.
She's also got more money, and she's got Big, who, you may recall, flew to Paris in the series finale to rescue her from a bad relationship. Now they're in a happy place, and if you've seen the trailer, you know there are wedding plans afoot and a pretty amazing dress.
But you can tell things are going to be difficult, even sad. It's a far cry from the story producers originally planned to tell four years ago, when the project stalled, at least partly because of reported demands by Kim Cattrall, who plays Samantha, for more money and creative control.
"The movie we were going to make was totally different," said Parker, 43. "It was a romp, kind of like those Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road movies. But four years have passed, and there's just a lot more time invested in all these relationships."
