For those not acquainted with Ann Brashares’ best-selling young-adult novel “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the teen fandom swirling around it, Carmen, Tibby, Lena and Bridget are best friends.
This is no small matter. The young women now in high school were destined for lifelong friendship when their mothers met at an aerobics class for pregnant women in Bethesda, Md.
As the big-screen adaptation of the novel opens, the quartet is about to spend their first summer apart.
Narrator Carmen (America Ferrera) will head off to South Carolina for a much craved reunion with her father. Her parents (played by Rachel Ticotin and Bradley Whitford) split when she was young.
Winsome athlete Bridget (Blake Lively) leaves for a soccer camp in Mexico. Quiet beauty Lena (Alex Bledel) will pay a visit to her grandparents on the Greek island of Santorini.
And cynical, whip-smart Tibby, played with pitch-perfect crankiness by Amber Tamblyn (“Joan of Arcadia”), has been sentenced to baby-sitting her much younger sister and working at Wallmans, an all-in-one store that is a dead ringer for Wal-Mart.
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To take the sting out of being left behind – or to make art out of anger – Tibby plans to shoot a movie about the humdrum vibe of everyday life. A “suckumentary,” she calls it.
On one last trip to a thrift store, the girls discover a pair of jeans that fits not just one of them but each of them.
In honor of this miraculous find, they create a ritual. Each girl will wear the pants for a week, document the most exciting thing that happens to her while wearing them, then she’ll ship them off to the next friend.
Unlike the pants, their adventures come with wrinkles: Lena meets Kostas, but her family hates his. Bridget makes moves on a boy that seem refreshingly bold but are also fueled by her mother’s death. Carmen is forced by her dad’s cowardice to deal with his new picture-perfect family. Tibby learns life lessons from a dying child.
As it turns out, a harsh as well as healing magic comes with the enchanted jeans.
Ten rules accompany the wearing of the pants. A couple reflect good fashion sense. But it’s Rule No. 4 that speaks to how frank and empowering Bashares’ book and this movie are about teen girls: “You may never let a boy take off the pants (although you may take them off yourself in his presence).”
Brashares’ book is not a “just say no” manifesto. Nor is it a yes, yes, yes celebration of teen sex. Directed by Ken Kwapis, this PG film deals with Bridget’s lost virginity (with Eric, a college student and soccer coach), though not as explicitly as the novel does. But it honors Bridget’s rush toward sensuality with a tender, non-judgmental sigh.
One reason Bashares’ novel is so sucessful is its matter-of-fact tone. There is a mix of hope and wariness, innocence and certainty, intensity and the faux apathy teens work so hard to perfect.
To screenwriters Delia Ephron and Elizabeth Chandler’s credit, much of this authenticity makes it to the screen. But the real backbone of “Sisterhood” comes from the actresses playing the friends, and the fifth-wheel surprise of Jenna Boyd.
As Tibby’s unasked-for sidekick and production assistant, Boyd takes precocious Bailey from pest to gift in a heartbeat. If Boyd can’t quite pull off the “Camille”-like demands of the final act, it’s because this youngster is so full of life.
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Parents be warned: For all its girl-power pleasures, “Sisterhood” travels some bumpy terrain. There are few issues the movie doesn’t pick up to try on: First love, first lust, parental abandonment, class conflict, depression, mortality are all covered.
Unlike the perfect pair of jeans, the emotionally big-ticket items here aren’t always comfortable. In fact, they hurt.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”
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PG for thematic elements, some sensuality and language|2 hours|TEEN DRAMA|Directed by Ken Kwapis; written by Delia Ephron and Elizabeth Chandler, based on Ann Brashares’ novel; photography by John Bailey; starring Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, Bradley Whitford, Rachel Ticotin, Jenna Boyd |Opens today at area theaters.
