Buy it... if you're an enthusiast of the concept and want to complete your collection of all three albums for this film with Aaron Zigman's conservatively pretty, piano-led underscore.

Avoid it... if you're a film score collector in search of superior romantic comedy music, because originality (and the series' main theme, outside of one token cameo) is absent from this effort.

Sex and the City: (Aaron Zigman) During its highly acclaimed and popular original run on HBO from 1998 to 2004, "Sex and the City" managed to do something that most female-targeted shows failed to achieve: lure men with dark humor and blatant sexuality. The balance between sensual hilarity and serious women's issues was a triumph of the series that gained it an intensely loyal fanbase, and after years of speculation (and delays caused by demands made by actress Kim Cattrall), a feature film extending its narrative arrived in 2008. To the delight of its followers and the rolling eyes of critics, the cinematic version of Sex and the City is essentially a very long (two and a half hours!) episode that begins with a summary of the events of the show's sixth season and simply continues the story. Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big still struggle with their on and off-again romance (but finally get married), Samantha Jones turns 50 years old but still lusts after young hunks, Charlotte York Goldenblatt finally realizes her dream of having children, and Miranda Hobbes deals with the infidelity of her live-in boyfriend and father of her child. A whole host of recurring characters and their ever-changing wardrobes return for this feel-good reunion, though the edge of the series' raw sexuality (not to mention the loss of the first season's "to the camera" bystander commentary) was absent from this rather mundane and straight-forward extension of the concept. With characters as embraced as those in Sex and the City, however, it's no surprise that the movie became the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time, eventually hauling in over $400 million worldwide and spurring development of a sequel that would also earn massively for the studio in 2010. The music for TV's "Sex and the City" was most notably credited to Douglas J. Cuomo, who wrote the catchy, cosmopolitan title theme and is one of seven composers credited with the episodic music heard throughout the six seasons. While he was involved in the writing of one of the songs that would factor into the film (and populate its main soundtrack albums) and his famous theme would be given cameo status on its own and in the score, the original music for the 2008 movie fell on the shoulders of romantic comedy and light drama veteran Aaron Zigman. The composer's involvement represents a safely conservative choice for the assignment, his experience all but assuring a relatively effective score. The orchestral ensemble is very large given what was necessary for this film, but the entire group only plays together for a couple of minutes in the score. A bevy of upbeat percussion, electric bass, and guitars provide the bulk of the tone in the surprisingly few colorful passages.