THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2
2008
Written by Elizabeth Chandler, based on the novel by Ann Brashares
Directed by Sanaa Hamri
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is silly, melodramatic, improbable fluff. But I think that's kind of okay. After the fearsome intensity of The Dark Knight and the general hyperbole of the rest of the summer movie season, what's wrong with a little silly, melodramatic, improbable fluff? It's comforting. You know, like slipping on an old familiar pair of jeans.
So we're trading in gruff costumed heroes, maniacal villains, outer space spectacles, and gun-toting potheads for the magical traveling pants of the title. Really, the pants business is just as ridiculous a contrivance as it was in the first film, a pair of jeans which somehow manage to fit all four girls in the sisterhood despite their varying shapes and sizes. Of course, the pants are not just pants, they're a security blanket which the girls use as a means of holding on to the normalcy of the past now that they're growing up and everything is changing. But more than that, they're a means of keeping all of the girls' stories intertwined despite the fact that, for most of the film, they're not even in the same tri-state area.
The story is again framed by voice-over narration from Carmen (America Ferrera), the only one of the girls, who are now facing summer after their first year of college, still truly buying into their sisterhood. Carmen expects her friends to stick around with her for the summer, but that is not to be: Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), now attending the film department at NYU, was supposed to write a romantic comedy but her characters broke up, so she has to take summer classes; Bridget (Blake Lively) leaves for an archaelogical dig in Turkey, despite the fact that in the prior film her whole thing was that she loved sports (a change-up so enormously fantastical that I could never take it seriously); and Lena (Alexis Bledel) is going to the Rhode Island School of Design to further her artistic ability. Carmen, frustrated that the sisterly anchors she was expecting have seemingly abandoned her, decides to go to Vermont to do backstage work on a play after having been invited by her actress friend Julia (Rachel Nichols).
But of course, each of the girls feels just as lost and lonely as Carmen. Tibby's continuing romance with Brian McBrian (a good character but a great name played by Leonardo Nam) is derailed after they have sex and discover that Brian's condom broke at some point. Bridget, the most boy crazy of the four in the first, has no romantic interest in this one, which was probably for the best, as she gets to come to terms with her mother's death, as well as meet her grandmother Greta (Blythe Danner, the movie's ace in the hole). Lena discovers that Kostos (Michael Rady), her Greek boyfriend from the original, got married shortly after they parted ways, and is heartbroken.
Watching these four deal with their struggles and problems is just as entertaining as it was in the first, and rarely in a guilty way despite all of the soapier elements. A big part of this, in fact the biggest part, is the casting. Though I've heard that the four young actresses were reluctant to come back for a sequel, onscreen they still have glowing chemistry and camaraderie. Without them, neither of these movies would be worth much of anything. Let's face it: The scripts are smarter than your usual teenfest, but are nothing exemplary, and the camera is merely there to watch them talk whilst sweeping across the beautiful landscapes. But the actresses give it a spark and a shine all their own, especially Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera. Tamblyn is cuter than ever, and her Tibby is snarkier than ever, while Ferrera gives another of her strong and grounded performances, the kind of performances which get routinely suffocated on her terrible hit TV show Ugly Betty. As for the other two: Blake Lively has always struck me as the weakest of the quartet, though she does a capable job with her heavier yet occasionally hackneyed subject matter, and it's a pleasure to see Alexis Bledel in anything after the disappointing, Amy Sherman-Palladino-less final season of Gilmore Girls.
The end of the movie wraps the story up in a way that would seem to prevent any further Traveling Pants adventures (I've read that it blends pieces of the second, third, and fourth books in the series), which is just as well. Before the actresses disown the characters for their own burgeoning careers--Tamblyn and Bledel were TV stars when the first came out, and now that torch has been passed to Ferrera and Lively--and before the franchise loses its charm, we've got this pure, unassuming look at four girls who discover what friendship really means. And for once, that isn't just ad copy.
- Arlo J. Wiley
August 16, 2008
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