'Pants' stitches together comedy, drama, romance
The original "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" turned out to be a sweet little gem about a quartet of best friends who discover a pair of blue jeans that magically fits each of them perfectly, even though the four have vastly different body types.
As the high school friends went their separate ways for the summer, they mailed the jeans back and forth. Each time, the pants played a pivotal role in changing their lives, ultimately for the better.
In this lesser sequel, slapped with the functional title of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2," the trousers take a back seat to a silver screen version of a CW soap opera with each sister in the hood confronting the past and her personal demons, all while grappling with romance, commitment, guilt and the always unpredictable future.
By the end, Carmen sums up the waning necessity for them to believe in the jeans' magic: "Maybe the pants had done just about as much as a pair of pants can do!" she observes.
"Traveling Pants 2" takes up with the girls graduating high school and heading off to their respective colleges. Carmen ("Ugly Betty" star America Ferrera) goes to Yale to schlep stuff around as a stage hand in the theater department. Goth Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) is accepted as a film student at New York University. The athletic Bridget ("Gossip Girl" star Blake Lively) plays soccer at Brown University. Lena (Alexis Bledel) winds up at the Rhode Island School of Design, apparently on a scholarship.
There, Lena befriends a handsome male model (Jesse Williams) who does the Full Monty for the benefit of Lena's drawing class. Still, Lena feels guilt pangs that she left her summer fling Kostos (Michael Rady) high and dry back in Greece.
Meanwhile, Tibby wrestles with the prospect that a malfunctioning condom might change her life for the worse with boyfriend Brian (Leonardo Nam). She turns sullen and silent, and, in a comical twist, begins to notice babies and pregnancies everywhere. A mother yells at her misbehaving child, "No! No! Period!" and Tibby panics at the words.
Bridget still suffers from self-esteem issues in the wake of her mother's suicide. Then, the discovery of hidden letters from her grandmother (Blythe Danner) sets her against her own father.
For Carmen, Yale is a miserable place. But things improve when she joins her roommate Julia (Rachel Nichols) at a Vermont theater program. There, she meets a handsome British drama student (Tom Wisdom) who pushes her to audition for Perdita in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." To her surprise, she gets it.
"Traveling Pants 2" reportedly condenses the last three books in Ann Brashares' series, which might explain why the sequel feels overstuffed with subplots, peripheral characters and a mildly taxing running time, even though it's under two hours.
Noted video and TV director Sanaa Hamri takes over the director's chair from Ken Kwapis, and although she brings a dynamic visual element to the story, the drama begins to feel forced as if Hamri tries to shove too much story into too little time.
Like the famous quartet of best friends in "Sex and the City," money appears to be no object to the Sisterhood, who fly off to Greece at will, and can afford the most expensive colleges in North America, scholarships not withstanding. (A line of dialogue explains that the four used an uncle's bonus miles to travel for free. Still, class conflict is nonexistent.)
"The pants had the magic to keep us together!" one of the Sisterhood notes.
But the pants didn't have enough magic to make a fitting sequel.
Maybe the pants had done just about as much as a pair of pants could do, after all.
'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2'
Rating: 2½ stars
Starring: Alexis Bledel, Blake Lively, America Ferrera and Amber Tamblyn
Directed by: Sanaa Hamri
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for sexual situations. 114 minutes.