THE POPCORN REEL FILM REVIEW/"The Sisterhood Of The
Traveling Pants 2"
Amber Tamblyn as Tibby, Alexis Bledel as
Lena, America Ferrera as Carmen and Blake Lively as Bridget in "The Sisterhood
Of The Traveling Pants 2", directed by Sanaa Hamri. The film opened across
the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday. (Photo: Warner Brothers)
Pants, Traveling Uneasily Amongst This
Renewed Sisterhood
By
Omar P.L. Moore/August
8, 2008
The sequel to the successful 2005 Warner Brothers film "The Sisterhood Of The
Traveling Pants" has some of the grounding in story that made the initial film
an impressive entertainment, but dispenses with sense and sensibility by the
time the third act arrives. That's too bad because the performances,
especially by America Ferrera do not disappoint. The sisterhood has now
reconvened after the end of the first year in college, with summer just
beginning. In the interim one of the female quartet has lost her mother,
another has seen a lover slip through her hands, a third has been seeking her
dreams in film school in New York, while the fourth has been stuck as a stage
hand at Yale University. From that point the signature pants which made
such a wondrous splash in the first edition of this romantic drama, uneasily
make their return. And it is the pants that are a tenuous fit for this new
film's story. After audiences accepted the first film's premise that pants
would fit four differently figured women, they are now asked to believe that the
pants would suddenly fit each of the four women, now three years older, wiser
and more weighty.
The pants are open for a mocking by the four women (Miss Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn,
Alexis Bledel and Blake Lively) and they all take full advantage. By the time the film has run its course the pants themselves have neither
substantively added nor subtracted anything from the lives of the quartet.
Other more pertinent factors will have come into play. The pants however,
are not the only thing about "Sisterhood 2" that doesn't work. Storylines
about recurring loves and loves brand new don't fully materialize because the
screenplay that charts them does so sloppily, in a unfinished or at least
unconvincing game of show and tell, raising potentially interesting situations
(one's love for a Derek Jeter-look-a-like after the pain of love interrupted)
and summarily discarding them in mid-plot. Even the most promising and
credible of the four stories (one young woman's attempt at familial rediscovery
and connection) seems as melodramatic as it does sincere.
For all the negatives of "The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2", which opened
on Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada, the film has more substance to it as a girl-power
story in transition than its more mature relative, "Sex And The City". The
women of Pantsland see neither excess nor marriage as the endgame for their
hearts, rather they connect best with the things that matter to them most:
family, friendship and education. The four young women appear more
equipped to deal with reality, and while it's a truism that in every Hollywood
movie from time immemorial there's an unspoken requirement that at least one
member of the female sex has to fall over or trip, or knock something over,
there are moments evoking real life demonstrating that the film sometimes means
business. And Kyle MacLachlan makes for an amusing presence as a
university theater professor, with Blythe Danner also putting in a little time
in a small role. Ms. Danner gives her aunt character a compassion and
reassurance that is worthy of a better film than this one, and there's too
little of Rachel Ticotin on screen. We barely know of how her character
has progressed over the past three years, despite the predicament she finds
herself in almost from the start.
Above all though, America Ferrera, whose star has shone far more brightly than
fellow co-star Amber Tamblyn over the last three years with her
Emmy-award-winning role as television's "Ugly Betty", is the single biggest
reason to see "Sisterhood 2", if at all. Miss Ferrera has enough talent,
charisma and tenderness to make these awkward pants fit.
Conversely, to coin a well-worn phrase, if you find that these pants don't fit .
. . you must acquit.
With: Shoreh Aghdashloo. The film is based on the novels by Ann
Brashares. Elizabeth Chandler wrote the screenplay.
"The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture
Association of America for mature material and sensuality. The film's duration is one hour
and 42 minutes.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights
Reserved.
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