Jenice Armstrong: Are you ready for SATC?

HAVE YOU lined up your girls to see the new "Sex and the City" movie?

And what does it mean if you haven't by now? I couldn't help but wonder if it means that you're just not that into it? Sorry for going Carrie Bradshaw on you, but there are just two days and counting until the movie opens nationally - as if you didn't know. But you'll get no complaints from me. We hard-core fans of the former HBO hit have been waiting a long, long time for this.

"We have a whole night planned," Tara Kelly, a Voorhees-based publicist, e-mailed yesterday. "We are going to dinner at RAW. There was an episode where the girls went to a restaurant with the same name . . . although that restaurant wasn't a sushi place.

"Then we're going to see the movie and head over to G after for some Cosmos. It sounds a little dorky but we are so excited to see the movie that we wanted to plan a whole 'Sex in the City' themed night around it."

You probably know other women planning similar "SATC" girl's nights out. That's because for the first time in too long a time there's a movie featuring women of a certain age dealing with many of the same issues that females, especially single women, grapple with - sex, relationships, their romantic desires, and did I mention sex?

Even though Carrie et al are all 40-plus now and reportedly have matured a bit, that's not to say that "SATC" past or present even remotely resemble the lives of real women. All the single women I know are either searching in vain for suitable men to bed or else are too afraid of catching a disease or have too much self-respect to engage in the bed-hopping that Carrie and company do.

That's the part of the show that always bordered on the outlandish - well, that and that a newspaper columnist could afford as many pairs of $500-and-up designer shoes as Carrie does and still make the rent on a New York City apartment.

But that's the appeal of all things "Sex and the City." It's pure escapism - but in a way that's meaningful for any single woman who has ever been single way longer than she ever dreamt she would be.During its heyday, "SATC" glamorized the single lifestyle and helped make it seem hip and cool to be looking for Mr. Right while in your thirties and, now, beyond.

As Kim Cattrall, who plays the cougarish Samantha Jones, once said, "The show is a valentine to being single . . . Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you; now it means you're pretty sexy and you're taking your time deciding how you want your life to be . . . and who you want to spend it with."

For my particular circle, it was therapeutic to watch TV characters chase unavailable men while overlooking the perfectly nice guy next door. If you've ever taken a late- night call from a weeping friend after she's encountered an ex who's looking better than ever, then you know what I'm talking about.

"My friend and I call it the relationship Bible," said one blog entry. "Whatever's going on in your life, there is a SATC episode to define and try and solve it. I've had the Aidan and the Mr. Big (ahem) drama and I swear when I saw it all unfold on screen I was speechless."

Meanwhile, Hollywood types are watching to see whether a flick that's as straight-up girly as this one will really rake in the box-office bucks. Or will it turn out that most "SATC" fans will wind up waiting until the movie hits Netflix before they catch up on what's been happening with Carrie and the gals? Analyst Jeff Bock of box-office tracker Reel Source is predicting a strong opening weekend but then a big drop off. "There haven't been a lot of movies like this," he said.

"There's no getting around that this is a film oriented to women and gay men," he said. "It will be very hard to get past that, especially with a lot of testosterone-driven films out there this summer."

Yeah, well analysts have been wrong before. Who'd have thought that a cable-TV show with a relatively small audience would become a cultural force? Or that a Singapore businesswoman would pay $22,000 for a ticket to "SATC" 's New York premiere only to find out that she'd been duped, according to the New York Post?

Even if the "SATC" characters wind up still being stuck in Cosmo-infused navel-gazing mode, it just may turn out that fans aren't over them just yet. *

Have you peeped a hot trend that hasn't been reported? E-mail heyjen@phillynews.com and let me know what you know.