Many
teen movies address the really important things of life: escaping the
homicidal
maniac with a grudge against adolescents, living the stoner/slacker
life,
dealing with mean girls/bully boys, or getting the boy/girl of your
dreams. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they
deal with two or more of these themes at once.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling
Pants, based on Ann Brashares’ bestselling novel for young adults
focuses
instead on such inessentials as how to cope with less than perfect
family
situations or how to face human mortality.
It doesn’t handle all of its many threads perfectly, but it
does
approach its subjects with enough intelligent respect to make this a
teen movie
that should appeal to older (and younger) folks as well.
It helps to build the movie around
two of the most accomplished, least stereotypical “teenage” actresses
currently
working, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel (both actually in their early
twenties, hence the quotation marks), joined by two less-known but
equally
talented actresses to make up the sisterhood of the title.
Like the book, the film revolves
around the summer adventures of four lifelong friends whose distinct
stories
are connected by a “magical” pair of blue jeans that fits each girl
perfectly,
despite significant differences in height and body type – the
“traveling pants”
that are passed among the foursome throughout the summer.
The pants actually play a fairly
small role in the girls’ adventures and contain no magic other than
their miraculous
ability to fit all wearers – this is realistic narrative, not fantasy. Repeat, not fantasy – not in the sense of a
magic tale, and not even in the usual “romantic” terms.
In Sisterhood, events have consequences:
people die, and it hurts; parents get remarried and forget the children
of
their first family, and it hurts; impetuous sex has significant
emotional consequences
– and it hurts. (Lest I imperil the movie’s PG rating, I should point
out that
there is only one (off-screen) instance of sex; there is nothing here
to alarm
parents.)
Only one of the four girls has a story
that is more happy than bittersweet.
That would be Lena (Bledel): summering with her Greek
grandparents, the
shy Lena finds love with their neighbor, Kostas (played by the hunky
Michael
Rady in his first film role). But their
story almost takes a back seat to the gorgeous scenery, all sun-baked
whitewash
and deep blue sky and sea – altogether a highly effective promotion for
travel
to the Greek islands.
Athletic Bridget (Blake Lively,
another relative newcomer though from a show-biz family) heads for a
soccer
camp in Baja California,
where she aggressively pursues a hunk of her own, Eric (Mike Vogel). Alas, their love is more troubled than that
of Lena and Kostas – in part because
he is
off-limits as one of the coaches, in part because, unknown even to
herself,
Bridget is working out feelings about her recently dead mother.
The film’s true power, though, comes
from the stories of Tibby (Tamblyn) and Carmen (America Ferrera). Carmen visits South Carolina to spend the summer
with her
father (The West Wing’s Brad Whitford) only to discover he has a
fiancé she
knows nothing about. Sparks fly and she returns home,
convinced
she has lost her father forever.
Tibby stays home and falls into a
reluctant friendship with 12-year-old Bailey (Jenna Boyd), who has a
tragic
secret. If a movie with four separate
story strands can be said to have a heart, it lies in this complex
relationship,
which encompasses both the strongest emotions and the greatest
character
development of the four. Boyd, the only actress who is actually the age
of her
character, turns in a particularly powerful performance; expect to hear
more
from her.
The stories come together at the end
as each girl’s emotional issues require intervention from her friends. It’s a conclusion that’s a bit too neat (the
book left things quite a bit messier), but it nicely brings us back to
a focus
on their friendship rather than their individual travails.
That too-neat ending reflects a
critical problem with this otherwise satisfactory movie.
There is too much by-the-numbers filmmaking: mechanical
transitions, scenes that follow the pants through the postal system for
no
other reason than to remind us that the pants are important, a
too-convenient
delay to an important letter, thus setting up the ending.
For the first half of the movie, the quick
cuts between the girls retard the progression of all four stories; only
when
the conflicts revolving around Tibby and Carmen heated up does the
viewer
become fully engaged with their characters.
Still, this is more intelligent than
most of the teen fare we’re likely to see this summer, and certainly
worth your
attention.
This
review
appeared
in the Aberdeen American News on June 5, 2005.