Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008) Review

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(More customer reviews)The impression that "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" gives is that it's a bubbly, bright, and--for all intents and purposes--meaningless sequel to the first film. To my relief, it follows the example set by its predecessor, a surprisingly levelheaded friendship story. Four years after discovering a magically fitting pair of jeans, best friends Tibby Tomko-Rollins (Amber Tamblyn), Carmen Lowell (America Ferrera), Lena Kaligaris (Alexis Bledel), and Bridget Vreeland (Blake Lively) have returned for a second chapter that remains on perfectly equal ground with the first, focusing on coming-of-age issues like maturity, self-discovery, family, and love. Unoriginal ideas? Maybe so, but that doesn't mean they're any less effective. If anything, they make the film's message that much clearer. It helps that many of the girls' problems are based in reality--high school issues, like being pretty and popular, are pushed aside in favor of adult issues, like pregnancy scares and family crises.
If there's anything we learned from the first film, it's that the magic of the titular jeans was symbolic; by in large, the girls worked through their own ups and downs on their own, with no miraculous intervention other than their friendship with one another. We learn pretty much the same thing in this film, which sees each character facing new, more mature challenges. Let's begin with Carmen, who doubles as the film's bookend narrator. She now attends Yale, working as a stagehand for the theatre department. Her mother (Rachel Ticotin) has since remarried and is now pregnant with her second child. When Carmen's hopes of spending the summer with her friends are dashed, she decides to join a Shakespearian theater company in Vermont with a prima donna named Julia (Rachel Nichols). Once there, a British actor named Ian (Tom Wisdom) coaxes Carmen into auditioning for "A Winter's Tale"; to her shock--and to Julia's horror--she's cast as Perdita. As rehearsals continue, she begins to fall in love with Ian.
Next, there's Bridget, who plays Soccer at Brown University. Lately, her interests have shifted to archeology. While on an expedition in Turkey, her instructor, Professor Nasrin Mehani (Shohreh Aghdashloo), opens her eyes to the fact that she's only running away from her past. Bridget, it seems, is still haunted by the suicide of her mother. And her relationship with her father (Ernie Lively) is worse than ever; before leaving for Turkey, she discovered a box full of letters her grandmother had written her, letters her father wanted to keep hidden. Returning to the United States, Bridget takes a bus to Alabama and finally meets her grandmother, Greta (Blythe Danner), an accommodating woman with a matter-of-fact outlook on everything, including her daughter's mental illness.
The next in line is Tibby, who continues to pursue her filmmaking dreams at NYU. Forced to stay in New York for the summer to rewrite her screenplay, she gets a job at a local video store. She's now dating Brian McBrian (Leonardo Nam), who was introduced in the first film as the "Dragon's Lair" champion. When their relationship is threatened (for reasons I won't reveal), Tibby begins to wonder if she was meant for happiness. She does put up a wall every time she gets close to someone, and that's because, deep down, she believes that those you love the most will eventually abandon you. Her attempts to get sympathy from Carmen are flatly rejected; she doesn't appreciate how uncommunicative Tibby has been all summer.
Finally, there's Lena, who attends an art college in Rhode Island on a scholarship. Heartbroken after breaking up with her Greek boyfriend, Kostos (Michael Rady), she reverts to her old timid ways. She then meets Leo (Jesse Williams), the male model hired to pose nude in her art classes. It isn't long before they fall in love, although we suspect it's for all the wrong reasons. All she really knows about Leo is that he's a nice guy, and he's incredibly handsome. But does she know what she wants out of life? Does she even know who she is? How can know she when she's torn between two men?
Naturally, the pants themselves have to play a part in this story, and indeed, they're continually FedEx-ed from friend to friend. The question is: Do any of them need the pants anymore? You'd think that, at this point, a pair of old jeans traveling the world would reveal itself as a big metaphor. They may realize that by the time the film ends. I'm not entirely sure, though.
Moments of this movie are perhaps a little too sentimental, and the general plot may be a little too formulaic. At times, the dialogue is a bit contrived. Consider this conversation: When Tibby says drearily, "I suck at relationships. I should have been a guy," Lena calmly responds, "A guy wouldn't care about sucking at relationships." Only best friends in a coming-of-age story could get away with lines like that. Then again, I never expected a reinvention of the wheel. Movies like "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2"--and its predecessor--are aimed at a very specific audience, namely teenage girls; if they can get something out of it other than the sight of four young women looking pretty, if they can leave the theater understanding the more complex aspects of the story, then the filmmakers can include all the predictable dialogue they want. I think this movie will get the job done, not merely for teenage girls, but for anyone open to the idea.

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