By Josh Moss
josh@louisville.com
It’s payback time, guys. Remember how you treated your girl to “The Dark Knight?” She’s going to return the favor by dragging you to “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.” And you’re paying. Her tear ducts will be working overtime, and you’ll be muttering, “Dude, where are all the dudes?”
“Pants 2” is a sequel to 2005’s original, and this time around it’s more of the same. Based on Ann Brashares’ popular book series, the story follows four best girlfriends, played by Alexis Bledel (“Gilmore Girls”), America Ferrera (“Ugly Betty”), Blake Lively (“Gossip Girl”) and Amber Tamblyn (“Joan of Arcadia”). (Judging by their television experience, you can surely guess the target audience.) When apart during the summer, they share a worn-out pair of jeans decorated with marker scribbles and patches. One person wears them for a while, then mails them to the next person. The kicker? The friends are different sizes but, for some reason, the jeans fit them all.
Sanna Hamri, who has directed episodes of “Desperate Housewives” and “Men in Trees,” takes over directing duties from Ken Kwapis. The way she leaps from one young woman’s life to the next makes it difficult to get into any of the storylines. Plus, when the four leads share screen time, they really don’t seem like they are — or ever were — close. And though we’ll admit we’ve never read one of the books and can’t say if Elizabeth Chandler’s script is loyal to them, the plot we get basically seems as interesting as a made-for-TV movie.
Each of the main characters has just finished her first year of college. Carmen (Ferrera) is at Yale and heads to Vermont for a prestigious acting camp where she hopes to work behind the curtain but is soon in the spotlight. Bridget (Lively) plays soccer at Brown and has landed a spot at an archaeological camp in Turkey. She’s also still dealing with issues about her deceased mom. Lena (Bledel), who has broken up with her boyfriend, is studying at the Rhode Island School of Design when a new love interest complicates things. Then there’s Tibby (Tamblyn), who attends New York University’s film school, works at a video store and has some serious issues after an intimate night with her boyfriend. Ah, who are we kidding, they all have relationship problems.
Ferrera is the best of the bunch and, if she wants, will have no problem transitioning to the big screen full time after “Ugly Betty.” She — and Tamblyn in a scene or two — is the only one who can pull off genuine emotion. The rest are bland. When the script requires tears from Lively or Bledel, for instance, we sort of chuckled, though we heard a few sobs from others in the theater. And we have to ask: Where on Earth did the women find guys this perfect? We’re talking college-aged men who can cook gourmet meals without recipes or who own boats in Santorini, not far from Greece’s mainland.
It’s not all bad, however. The scene in which Carmen’s mother has a baby is particularly touching. Bledel, for her part, does get a few laughs in a figure-drawing class while attempting to sketch a real-life model.
By the movie’s final third or so, when the four buddies get together, “Pants 2” loses what little momentum it had. But if you can deal with a message about friends becoming individuals “without losing each other” or dialogue such as “I love being in love,” you probably can look past that.
1 and 1/2 fleurs di lis out of 4
