PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 8/4/08)

It's easy to dismiss The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 as just another typical teen film with jocky dudes and back-stabbing girls that tend to flood the teen market. There was the toothless film adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club in 1995, starring Rachael Leigh Cook, who later graduated to become the ugly-duckling social outcast rescued by Freddie Prinze Jr. in She's All That in 1995. Similarly, we saw Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone as the designer-clothes crazed Cher in 1995 and the Lindsay Lohan vehicle Mean Girls in 2004. While those films were either underestimating their audience or merely featuring makeovers and female rivalry, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 bridges the gap between them. The idealism of the books about childhood friendship smoothly tackles the mature relationship topics that are common in these other comedies with none of the angst or crassness. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, directed by Sarah Lawrence grad Sanaa Hamri, depicts refreshingly positive female friendship based in reality without cynicism.

The sequel catches up with the sisterhood after their first years of college at New York University, Brown, Rhode Island School of Design, and Yale; though these are all suspiciously upper-middle class schools whose price tags are out of reach for many families, they're all prestigious institutions that offer young women something to aspire to. The girls venture off into different directions during their summer vacations in search of themselves. Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) and her boyfriend Brian McBrian (Leonardo Nam) confront the next step in their relationship, while Bridget (Blake Lively) makes a discovery about her past. Lena (Alexis Bledel) finds herself at the threshold between a former love and future prospects. And Carmen (America Ferrera), who heads to Vermot to volunteer behind the scenes at a theater camp, catches the eye of its leading man.

Despite the film's positive depiction of female relationships, there is room for a life-like "frenemy" situation through Carmen's privileged but vindictive roommate, Julia (Rachel Nichols). Her character's duplicity adds a welcome bit of bite. Sisterhood also handles mature topics like dating and sex well, if not interestingly, at times. Tibby, who comes across as a more liberated character, has a brief, mostly insinuated sex scene, while the act is left ambiguous with Lena, who's more conservative. Outside of the teen angst dramedies, rarely do we see young women depicted sexually free in a light-hearted film for the tender age of Sisterhood's demographic. Other films are far more black and white — there's either a "good girl" who plays by the rules and "holds out" or a self-destructive wild child — or the subject is ignored entirely, which is unrealistic in today's society.

What Sisterhood does seamlessly is explore these less-glamorous life complexities in detail while incorporating themes of family, the possibilities of female friendship, and self-discovery in a way that doesn't condescend to its audience. Notably, the film includes a dramatic scene within the sisterhood that earns thespian kudos to Tamblyn and Ferrera, whose storyline was most colorfully layered and perhaps relevant to young women today. Like any coming-of-age story, there's enough drama, comedy, and, of course, romance to be entertaining. But moreover, Sisterhood furthers an honest dialogue among young women, for whom life roads are not always clearly paved. It's definitely not The Baby-Sitters Club — and that's a good thing.

— Pauline Pechin