In an early summer season filled with swords, lightsabers and Adam Sandler, girl power strikes back with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, chronicling the life-altering summer of four Maryland teens.
The best friends are splitting up for the first time—sensitive artist Lena (Alexis Bledel) to her grandparents' place in postcard-perfect Greece, writer Carmen (America Ferrera) to North Carolina to stay with her estranged dad (Bradley Whitford) and jock Bridgett (Blake Lively) to a prestigious soccer camp in Mexico. Only angsty iconoclast Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), she of the sarcastic scowl and blue-tinted hair, is left to languish back home as a clerk at a discount superstore, while she films a "suckumentary" about the boring denizens of Suburban Nation.
The only thing linking them is a pair of jeans that, miraculously, fits them all. The girls decide to pass the pants to each other throughout the summer.
It goes without saying that each girl will confront some obstacle on the path to healthy womanhood. Fragile Lena must learn to open herself to love. Uber-confident Bridgett must deal with her mother's death. Caustic Tibby befriends an even more caustic young girl who's sick with leukemia, and half-Latina Carmen, in the richest of the four tales, finds herself an unwelcome stranger in her father's new white-as-headlights family.
There is little unexpected in what follows, but a well-oiled narrative can be its own pleasure if it's pulled off with skill and enthusiasm, and Sisterhood provides plenty of both. What makes the film work so well is the charm of its lead cast. The young actresses all have expressive faces and wear their characters' smarts and vulnerabilities with an easy naturalism. Better still, when the story takes its dramatic turns, the cast steps up, especially Ferrera, who fiercely demands to know why her father has abandoned her, and Tamblyn, who deftly captures the reluctant melting of Tibby's heart.
Ironically, Sisterhood's least engaging element is its own central conceit: the magical pair of jeans that connects the characters. It's unclear whether the pants bring the girls good or bad luck. And thanks to director Ken Kwapis' surefooted crosscutting between the four stories, the traveling pants turn out to be unnecessary as a linking device. They could have been left at home.