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NEW YORK (CBS 5 / AP) ― The clothes! The shoes! The magical depiction of Manhattan and the promise of finally finding true romance!

It's like porn for women. And we haven't even gotten to the sex part of the "Sex and the City" movie yet.

Fans will be thrilled to see their old friends — Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha — back together and on the big screen this weekend, which makes it easier to ogle what they're wearing, of course.

It is indeed a giddy, fizzy kick at the top, with star Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie breathlessly catching us up on what's been going on with the four girlfriends over the past four years. Carrie, of course, ended up with longtime love Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Now that she's grown up and moved on from writing columns to books, the two are scouring New York for the perfect apartment (i.e. one with sufficient closet space) — even though they're not officially engaged.

Cynthia Nixon's Miranda is still stuck in Brooklyn (it's hard to extricate yourself once you've moved there) with her mensch of a husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), and their son. Like so many women, she's struggling to juggle marriage, motherhood and her career.

Former shiksa goddess Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is living in the idyllic bliss of the Upper East Side with hubby Harry (Evan Handler) and the little girl they adopted from China.

And even Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has settled down — across the country in a Malibu beach house with her boy-toy lover/client, actor Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis). Naturally, this cougar still finds time to salivate over the hot surfer next door, who likes to slip out of his wet suit and into his outdoor shower when he isn't bedding random women in full view of the neighbors. And Cattrall, the oldest of the foursome, looks the best of all, especially in a nude scene that requires her to find creative uses for sushi.

They all come together when Carrie announces that she and Big finally plan to tie the knot ... and divulging much more would be positively criminal. Suffice it to say that the trying-on-wedding-gowns montage is a dazzler.

Yes, marriage matters now to these women who were primarily on the prowl for satisfying romps when "Sex and the City" entered the cultural consciousness a decade ago. But the characters were younger then — and so were the actresses playing them. Perhaps it's only inevitable that their priorities would shift, but the sexual liberation the TV show introduced certainly still lingers.

Early on in the new "Sex and the City" film -- and don't worry, we're not spoiling the plot here -- Carrie and 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 CBS 5, 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 Parker, who 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, with Carrie, now in her early 40s, as 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.

"The movie we were going to make was totally different," said the 43-year-old Parker. "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."

That includes the ties between the women, said Nixon, aka Miranda, the high-strung, hardworking lawyer who is at a breaking point when the movie begins.

"We were all aware, partly because of the big screen but also because we're older, that there has to be a maturity there with the way we confront problems," Nixon said. "So when Miranda and Carrie fight, they take a little distance and try and work it out."

Maturity can be seen in the clothes as well. "Were we still wearing these crazy outfits from 10 years ago, that would look wildly inappropriate," Nixon mused. But relax, fashionistas: Fabulous clothes still have their place.

"We do have fantastic clothes and shoes, that hasn't changed," noted Davis, who plays Charlotte, the Park Avenue socialite who's found domestic contentment with her good-natured husband and their adopted daughter. "But we couldn't pretend that time didn't pass. Our point is to tell it like it is."

The best example of that is Cattrall's Samantha Jones, whose frank expressions of her lusty desires always made her character seem larger than life. But Samantha also suffered the worst hardship of all the women: breast cancer, in the show's last season.

Cattrall is now 51, and in the series Samantha rarely spoke of her own age. In the film, her age is mentioned and even celebrated, in a poignant way.

"For a Hollywood movie that's extraordinary," said Cattrall. "But I think it's the way the show has always been. Whether it's aging or sex or dating or disease or 9/11, it's been met head on."

And Cattrall knows her performance is influenced by her own aging process. "A lot of things have happened in the last four years, and they haven't all been great," she said, referring to her divorce and her father's diagnosis of dementia. "And it shades what you do. It shades who you are."

With nobody left to represent the younger set, Michael Patrick King, who directed and wrote the film, brought in Jennifer Hudson, the 26-year-old Oscar winner from "Dreamgirls," to play Carrie's tech-savvy assistant —sort of a high-tech housekeeper, one with an eye for designer handbags.

Parker said the purpose of the new role is "to reflect what that time of life is all about, how you feel about love, and how simple it is then." To Hudson, that makes sense. "Now there's another kind of character the audience can relate to," she said.

Aging is not just a female process, of course, and Big, played by Noth, has a little added gravitas now, perhaps a few gray hairs, and a more mature approach to romance (To a point. This is Big, after all.) Noth, 53, seems thrilled that the film is presenting a set of mature characters.

"Where did the notion come from that the lives of adults are less interesting than the lives of those under 30?" he asked. "I actually think the movie has MORE relevance. I think the girls look better. And I'm just happy that we have some adult entertainment here.

"We've strayed so far in our culture, it's like, you know, can kiddie time be over?"

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)