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On the day of her wedding in the mostly amiable (and very long) movie version of "Sex and the City," the always stylish Carrie Bradshaw -- who has draped her body and adorned her feet over the course of her TV-character lifetime with about $10 billion worth of overpriced clothes and shoes -- turns up wearing a massive feathery thing in her hair that would have fit in perfectly at Marie Antoinette's court at Versailles. It looks as if a large and vividly blue tropical bird flying at a high rate of speed collided with her head, and she just decided to keep it there.

In other words, Carrie doesn't disappoint her fans. Were you expecting something from Bridal Barn?

Part of the fun of the groundbreaking HBO series has always been its unabashed eye candy: the designer clothes, the expensive shoes, the ravishing accessories, the exclusive parties, the fabulous New York lunches. Carrie and her three best friends might have endured more than their share of emotional traumas, shattered love affairs, steamy romances and career woes over the years, but you always knew that nothing was so bad that it couldn't be made better by a $525 pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes.

In that sense, the new movie -- which picks up the story of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha four years after the series ended -- unfolds with a big, gloppy sense of excitement. Compared to the small format of TV, all the glitz and glamour of the conspicuous-consumption lifestyle attained by the major characters seems even grander. A nice apartment in New York isn't enough for someone like Carrie. She gets one that includes a closet bigger than Terminal 2 at JFK.

Yet I can't help but think that the big screen isn't the ideal environment for the show. There was something comfortably intimate about the way the TV series dispensed its sassy (and often explicit) plotlines while its gorgeously dressed heroines flitted through the same kinds of crises, neurotic conflicts and romantic travails that befall women of all economic classes. On a movie screen, that intimacy -- and I guess you could say the show's feisty subversiveness -- gets a little too fairy-tale glossy.

Still, the movie likely will satisfy die-hard fans of the series, even though watching it is like undergoing a DVD marathon. At just shy of 150 minutes, it's like watching five episodes of the show in a row.

Which gives a lot of time for all sorts of catching up. As the film opens, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) has attained a state of domestic bliss with Big (Chris Noth). Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is a proud mama of an adopted girl. The sexually voracious Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has moved to Los Angeles, where she's ensconced in the life of her much younger boyfriend. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), working harder than ever, is trying to balance career and family.

In other words, there's much fodder for various subplots and story tangents to wind their way through, and you can almost sense each of the episode breaks in the film. A number of secondary cast members return, including Miranda's Steve (David Eigenberg) and Charlotte's Harry (Evan Handler), and there are some new ones as well, including a new assistant (played by a very weak Jennifer Hudson) for Carrie.

Director/writer Michael Patrick King has a deep affinity for these characters, and he relishes presenting strong, sexually confident women determined to make the most of their middle years. When Carrie matter-of-factly borrows Big's reading glasses in bed, it's an acknowledgment that she isn't in her 30s anymore -- and so what?

Parker is by far the strongest cast member, and it's lucky that her character serves such a central role in the show's story. She, out of them all, is able to make the leap to the big screen with the kind of depth that makes you think that a movie version of this TV show was a good idea.

And you get to see her wear a bird. Just wait till that style trickles down to Nordstrom Rack.