STUDIO: Warner Brothers
RELEASE DATE: November 18, 2008
STARRING: Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, and Blythe Danner
WRITTEN BY: Elizabeth Chandler
DIRECTED BY: Sanaa Hamri
FEATURES: Go Jump Off A Cliff: How the Exhilarating Final Sequence - Not Originally In The Script - Was Inspired By Fan Reaction To The First Movie
Additional Scenes
Gag Reel: On-Set Bloopers And Jokes

If a writer on a show that satirizes pop culture like Family Guy or The Simpsons was trying to think up a fake chick flick title to put in their series, I'm not sure that they could do better than The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. The concept of the sequel that's very existence caught most people by surprise is kind of beautiful in its simplicity. Call it "Sex and the City Jr." Four friends in their early 20s usually spend their summers together but circumstances send them off to four separate adventures, which they supposedly recount to each other through letters, phone calls, and discussions over a shared pair of pants. The first film, based on the popular series of books, was a surprise hit and all four of the lead actresses returned for the sequel, which incorporates plot elements from the following three books in the Pants series.

Four girls, four plotlines - Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is one of those clever constructs where if you don't like one story, don't worry because you'll only be there for 30-60 seconds before moving on to another one. The best of these near-anthology flicks blend the stories together to a point where you actually enjoy all four (something the SATC movie never got right). Much to this critic's surprise, that started to happen relatively early in Traveling Pants 2, a nice showcase for four talented young actresses and a mature and well-handled drama from an excellent director named Sanaa Hamri (who also shot the highly underrated Something New). I could have done without the pregnancy scare plotline, in which Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) sleeps with her boyfriend on their 10-month anniversary and the condom breaks. The rest of her plotline is pretty generic "am I pregnant and what if I am" material before becoming an even more generic break-up story. It felt like a minor plot from a season of Gossip Girl. The subplot for Bridget (Blake Lively) takes her all the way to Turkey to realize that she needs to find her estranged grandmother (Blythe Danner) and this one suffers from an overabundance of plot. It easily could have been its own film, even if it would have been a very melodramatic one.

The two pockets in Traveling Pants 2 and the ones that hold the movie together belong to Alexis Bledel as Lena, a girl who discovers that her ex-love got married after they broke up and she finds new romance with a boy in drawing class and America Ferrera as Carmen, the girl who really holds this group together. It's simple and sweet but Bledel, probably the best actress in the film, sells her arc completely. I find her an incredibly believable actress. America Ferrera proves again that she has range outside of Ugly Betty as Carmen, the girl who wishes her friends weren't drifting apart and finds herself in an awkward situation after moving from backstage to on it at a Shakespearian production in Vermont. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is a simple but effective film with confident direction and some good work by its young stars. It's not going to change the world but it's also certainly not trying to and it's nowhere near as bloated and over-the-top as the average summer sequel. It's writer and director know their audience and they set out to satisfy it. Shockingly, they might even satisfy some people who never thought they'd see a movie with as ridiculous a title as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

Warner Brothers Blu-Ray development has been one of the most impressive of 2008. You wouldn't think that the picture on a movie like Traveling Pants 2 would be notable but I was consistently impressed with the clarity of the HD transfer. The colors are perfectly mixed in every scene. The audio is nothing to write home about but the mushy chick dialogue is never muffled. As for special features, Traveling Pants 2 is surprisingly lacking for a major studio sequel. No commentaries? No behind-the-scenes? It's odd that there aren't even EPKs that could be strung together for a film with this many stars. You know they did interviews somewhere. Instead, fans will only find a gag reel, additional scenes, and a bit about the final sequence in the film. All boring. But the dearth of special features is the only thing about these pants that falls apart at the seams.