YOU could call “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” a “Sex and the City” for ‘tweens, but truthfully the former is a much better movie, albeit far less raunchy.
In the three years since the first “Traveling Pants” was adapted from one of Anne Brashears’ novels, two of its little-known ensemble of four have become TV stars – America Ferrara on “Ugly Betty” and Blake Lively on “Gossip Girl.”
PHOTO GALLERY: The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2
PHOTO GALLERY: The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2 Premiere
Surprisingly, they’re not rewarded with the juiciest of the four intersecting story lines drawn from three other Brashears novels.
After a difficult freshman year at Yale, Ferrara’s perennial outsider Carmen is looking forward to a reunion with her buddies.
But all three have other summer plans, though they pledge to continue mailing the same pair of jeans back and forth between each other.
So Carmen accompanies a pal from the Yale drama school to a Vermont theater camp, where she expects to work backstage.
But thanks to a hunky Brit named Ian (Tom Wisdom), the insecure Carmen ends up auditioning for the director (Kyle MacLachlan) and playing opposite the hunk in a production of “A Winter’s Tale” – much to the annoyance of her WASPy roommate (Rachel Nicols).
Lively’s Bridget, a student at Brown, is on an archaeological dig in Turkey overseen by a professor (Shoreh Agdashloo) who helps Bridget understand that she’s still shaken by her mom’s suicide – and needs to reconnect with her mom’s mom (Blythe Danner) in Georgia.
Libby (Amber Tamblyn), meanwhile, is a struggling NYU student working at the Two Boots video store – and her relationship with a classmate (Leonardo Tam) is threatened by a possible pregnancy.
Lena (Alexis Bledel), studying figure drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design, has a crush on a hunky model (Jesse Williams) – while still carrying a torch for the boyfriend who married someone else in Greece.
The girls bicker, bond, bicker – but their bonds are inevitably as indestructible as those jeans, and as inevitable as the movie season’s second big romantic climax on a Greek island.
No singing this time, though.
Sensitively directed by Sanaa Hamri, “The Sister of the Traveling Pants 2” demonstrates that not only is sisterhood powerful, it can be awfully entertaining.
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2
You go, girls!
Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (mature material and sensuality). At the Empire, the Kips Bay, the Battery Park City, others.