Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 : Movie Review
Posted on August 8, 2008
Filed Under comedy, movie reviews, teen |
“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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