Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 : Movie Review
Posted on August 8, 2008
Filed Under comedy, movie reviews, teen | Leave a Comment
“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” is the movie equivalent of being patted on the shoulder by an encouraging high school guidance counselor and assured that you are doing just fine. Never mind that the four main characters in this sequel to the first film, a modest 2005 hit, are now college age. Individually and collectively, they are still in high school.
I have to admit, I was a little skeptical going in to the film because this movie followed the tale of the fourth book, “Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood.” The first movie (which I also loved) focused on the plot of the first book, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” So where were book two and three?
But my apprehensions fell away no more than three minutes into the movie. Even if you didn’t like the books, you can easily enjoy this tale about friendship and finding who you really are.
The movie touches on facts of life that every friendship goes through: people grow apart. These magical pants that Bridget (Blake Lively), Lena (Alexis Bledel), Carmen (American Ferrera) and Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) found in the first movie where able to hold them together through the carefree summers of high school, but the first summer in college proved to be a little more difficult. The girls were forced to learn how to keep in touch on their own.
Which is why it’s such a pleasure (and a relief) to encounter movies such as “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.” Like the first “Pants” movie, it presents its heroines’ relationships as complicated, challenging and particularly rewarding, and not simply as a vehicle for finding the perfect boyfriend.
The four stars of “Sisterhood” are back for this smart, confident second act, based on the novels of Ann Brashares. They’re reprising their roles as best friends who share a remarkable pair of blue jeans, which, you’ll remember, mysteriously transforms to fit each of them whenever she needs its powers most.
As the movie opens, we find the friends (Carmen, Bridget, Tibby and Lena) at the end of their first year in college; Carmen (America Ferrera, appealing as always), still the group’s emotional center, is looking forward to a summer at home surrounded by her best friends, but the others have different plans. Tibby (the enormously talented Amber Tamblyn) is staying in New York to work on her screenplay, and Lena (Alexis Bledel, “Gilmore Girls”) has signed up for summer classes at a design school. Meanwhile, Bridget (”Gossip Girl” Blake Lively) is off to Turkey on an archaeological dig.
This is an ensemble piece, but the young stars are each entrusted with a complete, largely individual story arc, a challenge they handle with various degrees of success: Tamblyn, whose Tibby is sarcastic and very funny, is the clear standout, imbuing her most brittle exchanges with humor and a tentative warmth. Ferrera, taking a break from the relentless cheeriness of “Ugly Betty,” has become a mature, highly nuanced performer. Meanwhile, Lively’s Bridget is like a sunny day threatened by storm clouds; her slightly manic high spirits feel a bit dangerous. Hers is by far the most dramatic story line, and Lively seems a bit overwhelmed at times, but she turns in several very nice scenes with Blythe Danner, who plays her estranged grandmother. As for Bledel, I can’t decide if she’s an incredibly subtle actor, or if she’s only capable of two facial expressions (vague confusion and vague happiness).
Watching the adventures unfold, I was reminded of the “Sex and the City” movie—not only because “Sisterhood’ also features four independent, pointedly distinct characters who aren’t perfect, as friends or as people, but who make brave attempts at being the best possible versions of both—but because both films belong to that rare breed: movies whose sole focus is a largely realistic iteration of evolving, empowering female friendships.
Directing from Elizabeth Chandler’s script, Sanaa Hamri takes over from Ken Kwapis, and she generates familiar human warmth. She’s also raised the number of interracial relationships and without the fuss of her previous interracial romance, “Something New.” But in oscillating among all these plots, arguments, fantasies, and pratfalls (”I just fell off a donkey!”), the movie drags something awful. The film’s climax takes us, with hilarious ease, to a seaside village in Greece, and it’s disappointing, to say the least; you come all this way and not one ABBA song.
The adults who show up to guide and inspire are distinguished enough: Kyle MacLachlan swishing it up at drama camp, Blythe Danner regal in Alabama, Shohreh Aghdashloo wise and glamorous in archeological safari wear, Rachel Ticotin underused again as Carmen’s mom. The real trouble is that Tamblyn, Lively, Bledel, and Ferrera, while lovely in their respective sections on “Traveling Pants 2,” make the greatest sense together: the hugging, the fighting, the sitting around staring out at the sea. What they have goes beyond basic chemistry. They seem spiritually fused and, at this point, exceedingly womanly. In the intervening years, they’ve become pretty good actors, too. Now where’s the filmmaker who’ll give them more to do than pregnancy scares and falls off donkeys?
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Pineapple Express Review: Movie Reviews
Posted on August 8, 2008
Filed Under comedy, movie reviews | Leave a Comment
In the tradition of Cheech & Chong, Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Ricky and Lucy, Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, Smothers and Smothers, Sanford and son, Spicoli and Hand, Bert and Ernie, Riggs and Murtaugh, cops and robbers, dumb and dumber, right brain and left, peanut butter and jelly, bong hit, roach clip and Snoop Doggy Dogg comes “Pineapple Express,” a stoner comedy that partakes of a gentle indie vibe before hitting the hard stuff for a major Shane Black-style blowup and meltdown.
In short it’s funny. Really funny.
The easiest way to explain Pineapple Express is: if The Big Lebowski was a forties film noir with this big shambling wreck of a stoner in it then Pineapple Express is like a B 80’s action movie, a Cobra if you will, with two big shambling wrecks of stoners in it. From the opening scene, which combines a wonderful cameo by a crusty Thomas Hayden Church, science experiments, hilarious use of old diving suits, and cold blooded murder into a uproarious combo you know Pineapple Express is going to be something special.
The film follows Seth Rogen as a Process Server who really really likes weed. When he witnesses a murder, the culprits are able to track him and his dealer (James Franco) thanks to the titular strain of smoke. Things get complicated and eventually the two find themselves in the middle of a full scale gang war. 
Throughout the early moments of the film we see Dale dressing in a variety of costumes as he carries out his job serving folks subpoenas, divorce papers and other varieties of unwanted legal documents. It is an early source for comedy and it is used wisely and sparingly. His final drop for the night is with a man named Ted (Gary Cole) who ironically turns out to be Saul’s supplier.So when Dale is the only witness to a murder in Ted’s living room involving a crooked cop, Ted and brains splattered all over the window he forgets his delivery and high-tails it out of there. In his haste to leave the scene he is seen and his abandoned roach becomes a link back to Saul as Ted recognizes the strain he sold Saul, and Saul alone. Our boys are on the run and our film has a plot.
From this point on out we find Dale and Saul avoiding the law, ducking the criminals and meeting a variety of social misfits, but none of them are better than Red played by Danny McBride. I was harsh on McBride’s earlier release this year Foot Fist Way, but he redeems himself both with Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, which releases only a week later. His foul mouth and hick accent are the obvious sources of comedy, but his character’s passion for survival and the ultimate role he plays in the film is what holds this picture together. Without Red, Pineapple Express would have been a big dull dud.
Pineapple Express is essentially a party sub in which all of the dead and bloody stuff is unevenly packed into the last third; followed by endless amounts of lazy meta-improv between James Franco, Rogen and Danny McBride (who almost saves the movie) sitting on their self-gratified asses telling us how amazing the movie we just watched was. In the Judd Apatow-produced and much funnier, Step Brothers, Will Ferrell & Co. go out with a bang with a rock opera, some unclassic Billy Joel, and the affable phrase “Fucking Catalina Wine-Mixer!” If PE is the new gold standard for American comedy as proclaimed by every glossy magazine this month, I’m going to go take a shit and read my collection of National Lampoon magazines for the next year like the black dude in Summer School.
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Posted on August 8, 2008
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