Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), from left, Charlotte York-Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis), Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) come back with a bang in Sex and the City.

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New line cinema / craig blankenhorn

Four years after Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte sipped their last cosmo and strapped on their last Manolo Blahnik sandal on HBO’s Sex and the City, they’re back in a big-screen follow-up to the runaway hit series to tie up some loose ends, struggle anew with relationships, uncover new crises and rediscover the power of friendship.

It’s Pride and Prejudice in stiletto heels with complications that were only hinted at in the last episodes of the series.

A plus is that Sex and the City — the movie — was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, who was a longtime executive producer and sometimes writer of the series. He knows the characters well and has given the film the same rat-a-tat-tat snap and stingingly clever lines that turned it into one of HBO’s biggest hits, interweaving four distinct storylines together without losing the thread of any one of them. The four gal pals make an easy transition to the movie screen as they juggle jobs, family, love and relationships — sometimes not that easily — in a film that will reward faithful fans and no doubt earn some new ones.

The movie opens where the series left off in 2004. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still in love with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), an on-again off-again relationship that has weathered 10 rocky years, but now seems on an even keel. She is still writing about her friends and her relationships (the TV series was based on Candace Bushnell’s columns in the New York Observer about her life as a single woman in New York and the lives and relationships of her friends).

Samantha (Kim Cattrall), now pushing 50, has left her beloved Manhattan for Malibu where she’s managing the TV career of boy-toy hunk Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis), returning to New York at the least possible urging to be with her friends.

Charlotte (Kristin Davis), possibly the least conflicted character, and husband Harry (Evan Handler) have finally gotten their adopted daughter from China.

Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is trying to balance her legal career with marriage and motherhood, not always to the happiness of husband, Steve Brady (David Eigenberg).

But time, of course, has not stood still. When the twice-married Mr. Big, who seems to spend most of his off time tooling around the city in a chauffeur-driven town car and whose real name is John Preston, decides to shower Carrie with a deluxe penthouse apartment in the sky, her life seems complete. Well, at least until the offhand musings of an acquaintance — and in Sex and the City offhand remarks often spur the action — about “a smart girl, until she fell in love” and lost everything bring Carrie down to earth. Suddenly Carrie realizes that without a ring to cement the relationship, she could be out on her ear if Mr. Big’s ardor ever cools.

Yes there are wedding bells, complete with a fey wedding planner (Mario Cantone) whose hilariously waspish lines stingingly hit their marks and an impressive wedding dress fashion show (postured as preparations for a huge Vogue spread about “the bride at 40” ordered up by editor Candice Bergen) that drew oohs and aahs from a preview audience.

But that’s only the start of the complications and crises that arise and have the four friends sometimes wondering about even their own friendships. For there’s a wedding day disaster, infidelity, estrangement, humiliation, a Mexican honeymoon without the groom, second thoughts about a long-term love, cold feet, words that sting, a motherhood miracle, a soul-searching New Year’s Eve, sushi and an endless look for more closet space. There also are enough coincidences to fill two movies in King’s attempts to keep spinning the plot in new directions. He also looks at the various crises three of the four characters undergo from different angles until things begin to become a bit redundant. The film runs for a little more than two hours and 20 minutes and yet it’s consistently entertaining, especially thanks to the winning cast who are comfortable after all these years in their characters.

Jennifer Hudson, the Academy Award-winning actress (for Dreamgirls and an also-ran on American Idol), shines in the role of Carrie’s influential new assistant, Louise. She straightens out Carrie’s correspondence, her Web site and her life.

But it’s the four women who have struck a chord with women across the country and each of the four in Sex and the City has her moments to shine. Parker is the most conflicted as Carrie, who sometimes plunges ahead without taking into consideration the effects of the aftershocks which may rattle Mr. Big. After things go badly, there’s lots of damage to repair and fences to mend.

Nixon’s Miranda, likewise, must face a tremendous disappointment in her own life. How she and Carrie work through their respective problems and eventually realize that compromise and forgiveness are the grease that makes relationships run smoothly is one of the points of the film.

As in the TV series, Cattrall has the funniest lines, although her language seems, surprisingly enough, to have been cleaned up for the big screen. But Cattrall’s Samantha still has her bawdy, naughty take on life intact and she runs with it gleefully, although for Samantha there’s also an epiphany of self awareness that takes the wind out of her sails.

Davis’s Charlotte is the steadiest (and seemingly happiest) of the four. By being the least flamboyant and with the fewest problems, her character threatens to fade into the wallpaper. Yet she comes back strong in a pivotal moment that rocks the film’s ending and will leave the audience with a glow in more ways than one.

****Sex and the City

Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, David Eigenberg, Jennifer Hudson, Candice Bergen, Jason Lewis, Evan Handler, Mario Cantone.

Rated: R, contains sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com