Film Reviews

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

• Rating:
• Director: Sanaa Hamri
• Starring: Amber Tamblyn
• Details: US / 117mins (12A)

Where do you start? With the title? With the threadbare plot? With the yucky sentimentality for sentimentality's sake? With the character's emotions that one scene has no bearing on the next? Take your pick, but the end result will always be The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 is crapola. The follow-up to the, supposedly, successful Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants sees the four girls at a different stage in their lives: Bridget (Lively) is on an archaeological dig in Turkey, stifling her emotions over her dead mother; Carmen (Ferrera) lands a role in play and falls for a dashing English actor; Lena (Bladel) takes up an art course and falls for the dashing model; and the sarcastic film student Tibby (Tamblyn) is having problems with her boyfriend. As the girls Fed-Ex their favourite attire to each other, their lives change. Or something. Does it matter? I doubt it. Amber Tamblyn has a line halfway through this mess that goes something like this: "Smarmy, nauseating love stories that have no basis in reality." A note to the writers - just because you flag that your story is nonsense, it doesn't make it any less nonsense. This 'film' is all fluff, lightweight garbage that doesn't say anything about anything. It does, in its defence, try to ground the proceedings by giving Bridget's grief over her mother's suicide some screen time. This grief, however, isn't on Blake Lively's face or in her eyes or in her performance. Movies like this are just an excuse to get the director and actors out of TV and into film.

Review by Gavin Burke