'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2': Sequel is tailored for fun and friendship
The four likable best friends whose bond survives separation, romance, disappointment, ambition, success and misunderstandings –united by a pair of magical traveling pants –are back.
Three years after we first met Tibby, Bridget, Lena and Carmen, the girls are all at college –and some top-notch colleges they are –and thrilling experiences await them as they prepare for the summer.
Tibby Tomko-Rollins (Amber Tamblyn) is attending NYU, and summer school keeps her close to home. She’s lost much of her sour edge and snaps mostly at customers of the video store where she works.
Lena Kaligaris (Alexis Bledel) is attending the Rhode Island School of
Design, where she drops all her pencils when the model in her figure-drawing class drops his drawers. Not only is he — OMG! — a guy, he’s a cute guy! And he said hello to her! (This is one of those moments when you wish the writers had given these gorgeous actresses some fresh, age-appropriate material rather than a chestnut in which a college student is asked to react like a much younger teen.) Lena’s summer takes her to Greece, where Kostos introduces her to his wife. Who is pregnant. Heartbreak.
Bridget Vreeland (Blake Lively) is attending Brown, and travels to Turkey for an archaeological dig that involves plenty of major discoveries made by her personally, as well as irrepressible dancing with the other young diggers. But her mother’s death still haunts her, and she ultimately returns home to dig into her own roots.
Carmen Lowell (America Ferrera) is attending Yale, and plans to spend the summer close to home, where her mom is expecting a baby with her new husband. But Lena and Bridget’s travels and Tibby’s exciting home base of Manhattan prompt her to accept a classmate’s suggestion that she work at a Vermont summer theater — strictly as backstage help, of course. Her tall, slender, blond classmate with the acting genes is the leading-lady type. Klutzy Carmen is just a pair of invisible hands, falling through scenery when she tries to act cool. You can see where this is going.
The pants, so critical to the plot in the first film, seem almost superfluous to the events here. In the opening, narrator Carmen says dreamily, “Maybe the pants had done just about all a pair of pants could do — the rest we had to do on our own.” After the inevitable setup scene, the pants mostly appear as bulky envelopes stuffed in mailboxes, although they are occasionally donned in humorous “Come on pants, give me a miracle!” moments. But the magic, as Carmen suggests, is mostly what the girls do themselves.
Check that — the magic is also in the unlikely plot, which flashes “Suspend Disbelief Now” in neon at every turn.
Even putting aside the wildly improbable romantic twists and turns, we are asked to believe that some offhand mention of “frequent-flier miles” could get three girls to Greece on the spur of the moment — in the summer, no less.
We are impressed by a candle-lit picnic on an expansive Manhattan rooftop with a fabulous skyline view set up by a guy whose only work appears to be as a figure model.
We are stunned by the way these girls get lucky breaks and hunky guys, by the way their hidden talents are recognized and exalted, and by the way a woman giving birth needs only a random friend of her daughter’s to show up and say spunkily, “We can do this together!”
Oh, what am I complaining about? Tweens and teens will love this film, exalting as it does the importance of friendship that becomes sisterhood (the one real sister who appears, Lucy Kate Hale as Effie, is kind of a man-stealing, pants-losing sourpuss), and the triumphs of true love and real talent.
Given the youth of that target audience, the important sub-plot of one of the girls having (on screen, although not graphic) sex with her boyfriend, followed by an immediate pregnancy scare, seems a bit out of place. Fans of the first movie — or of Ann Brashares’ books — will recall that this isn’t the first time a member of the Sisterhood has dropped those traveling pants. And the pregnancy scare does lead to one of the most clever scenes in the film, as the worried girl suddenly notes the ubiquitous use of the word “late” and her path is filled by googly-eyed, drooling infants and looming women with huge baby bulges. It’s almost as funny as the fisherman who is leaving his small Greek town to enroll at the London School of Economics, an unlikely announcement that got me giggling.
This film, although it has lovely moments, won’t bear critical scrutiny. If you can accept that the pants fit everybody, you can accept the wildly improbable, if ultimately satisfying, events that befall the four women who wear them.
Movie Review
“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” ★★★ (Out of four)
Rated: PG-13
America Ferrera, above, Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel play four best friends who are linked by a pair of traveling pants that magically fit them all and allows them to maintain their bond. Opens Friday in area theaters.
