Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants -- a male perspective [Spoilers]

She Who Shall Not Be Named and I went to the movies the other day. I thought we were going to see Cinderella Man, but she had other ideas. She declared that Russell Crowe was a creep and she didn’t want to see him and suggested another film. You married guys know how this went. “We” decided to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Pants is made for adolescent girls of all ages, and in some ways it’s a refreshing break from the sorts of movies I usually see. It’s a sweet film. There are no bad people in it, just some bad actors. To the extent that there are conflicts they are the result of misunderstanding, and are easily resolved by people communicating effectively with one other. In three of the four stories told in the film, the problem is a man (a stern grandfather, an uncommunicative father, and a maybe boyfriend). All three are ultimately generous, forgiving, and reasonable when confronted by the demands of aggressive girls.

What’s the film about? Well, the influences are obvious. Think Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood [there is even a character named "Ya Ya"] meets Bend it Like Beckham, meets Mystic Pizza. Four sixteen year old girls [played by twenty-something actresses], lifelong friends, are getting ready for summer vacation before their senior year of high school. On a shopping trip they discover that, despite their disparate physiques, one pair of blue jeans fits them all. They purchase the magic pants and decide to share them through the summer. Each will keep the pants for a week, then mail them to another who will keep them for a week, and so on. They then disperse to various destinations – one to visit relatives on Santorini in the Aegean, another to a soccer camp in Mexico, a third to visit her father [who left her mother years earlier], and the fourth remains at home in Bethesda, MD to work and to try to make a documentary film.

We follow each girl as she has a life-transforming experience, arranged (we are led to believe) by the magic pants. Lena, played by Alexis Bledel, [Gilmore Girls, Tuck Everlasting, Sin City] travels to Greece where she enters the household of her grandfather. Shy, withdrawn, and with an artist’s sensitivity Lena blunders into a relationship with a local boy only to find that his family and hers are ancient enemies. She is forbidden to see him again, but can’t resist. Eventually she works up the courage to confront her grandfather and wins his approval. In the end she finds true love.

The second girl, Bridget, played by newcomer Blake Lively is a boy-crazy soccer star. At camp she sets her eyes on one of the coaches and determinedly seduces him. Finally he succumbs and she discovers that sex is no substitute for love and, upon reflection, realizes that she was just trying to assuage the loneliness that she had felt since the death of her mother. In the end she and her conquest decide to remain friends and she realizes that she has already found love in the sisterhood.

The third story is the weakest of the four. Carmen, played by America Ferrera [Real Women Have Curves] is proud of her Puerto Rican heritage and feels terribly the loss of her Anglo father who left her and her mother years before. She plans to spend her vacation with him and secretly hopes to effect a reconciliation between him and her mother. But, when she arrives she finds that he is planning to marry a WASP woman with perfect Anglo children her own age. She rebels against this and makes a perfect ass of herself, exploding in rage against her father and his new family. In the end, though, the reunited sisterhood convinces her to attend her father’s wedding (wearing the magic pants) and there she and her father reconcile.

The final story, and by far the best, follows Tibby, an alienated young film-maker played by a superb young actress, Amber Tamblyn [Joan of Arcadia], as she works at a mindless job in a warehouse market and endeavors to make what she calls her “suckumentary”. She meets a precocious young girl from her neighborhood who volunteers to become her “assistant.” The interaction and verbal sparring between the young girl, “Bailey,” played by Jenna Boyd [The Missing], and Tibby is wonderful and the only memorable aspect of the film. Gradually Tibby learns to tolerate, then respect, and finally to love, the annoying kid Bailey. In the end Tibby learns that Bailey is dying of leukemia and has to deal with the death of a loved one.

That’s it. The four stories are silly sentimental slop informed by the easy kind of benevolent supernaturalism that pollutes so much of today’s popular culture (think Touched By An Angel). It is unchallenging and mildly amusing. Competently directed by Ken Kwapis (Beautician and the Beast), a prolific TV director, it is in essence an extended TV show – fine for its target audience of twelve to fifteen year old girls, but at best mildly amusing for an adult male. The one real reason to see it is the performance of two extraordinary young actresses – Tamblyn and Boyd. We expect to see a lot more of them in the future.

Nobody gets killed, nothing blows up, no car chases -- what were they thinking?