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Page to Screen by Alicia Potter Ann Brashares’s peripatetic trousers may flatter four very different behinds, but there is one scenario in which they prove to be a less-than-perfect fit: on the big screen. Like its awkward 2005 predecessor, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 fails to stitch up the emotion and humor of the bestselling series. Moreover, it crams events from the last three books into a jolting mess of a soap opera. The good news? There are no more installments left to mangle. Director Sanaa Hamri, taking over for Ken Kwapis, starts auspiciously enough. The film opens with a languorous pan of the Pants, up their magically forgiving inseam, over their patched and painted-on memories. Wistful voiceover narration by Carmen (America Ferrera) and an efficient montage establish that she and her three best friends have finished their first year of college. Yet the time apart has taken its toll; there’s some uncharacteristic sniping when they ceremoniously meet to set the rotation for the wise, old jeans. Have the girls outgrown their ritual — and each other? The quartet then parts ways for the summer: fiery Carmen to a theater program in Vermont, edgy Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) to film-school summer session at NYU, prudish Lena (Alexis Bledel) to figure-drawing class in Providence, and wild Bridget (Blake Lively) to an archaeological dig in Turkey. It’s a lot to keep track of, and within half an hour, Hamri loses control of her material. The narrative lurches from girl to girl, location to location, for a ride that’s bumpier than Bridget’s drive to the ruins. On the page, the series’ strength is its handling of emotion, both quiet insights and major meltdowns, and it’s forgivably, even enjoyably melodramatic at times. However, here the tears and turmoil come off as overwrought, whiny, and tedious. Waiting for Tibby to get her period does not make for compelling cinema, and with such a jumpy pace, the calibrated poignancy of the books is lost; even a knowing audience must work to fill in the meaning behind the clichés. Adding to the jumbled effect: screenwriter Elizabeth Chandler slaps together story lines out of order. In the most egregious instance, Tibby’s broken-condom freak-out (Book 4) coincides with Carmen’s mother’s pregnancy (Book 3). The result is an Afterschool Special-like morality tale: Tibby, already scared sex-less, not only helps deliver the infant but then also shows up later, lingering in the doorway with misty eyes, to catch Carmen’s (ahem, married) mother and stepfather cuddling with their newborn. Punishment enough? It’s not the only disturbing departure. Although women refreshingly dominate the film’s credits, and Tibby at one point proclaims herself a feminist, the sequel’s male characters steer much of the action. Carmen lands a role in A Winter’s Tale not because of a savvy female casting director, as Brashares writes, but due to the attention of a cute British actor/love interest (Tom Wisdom). Meanwhile, Bridget’s dad (woodenly played by the actress’s real-life father, Ernie Lively) turns out to be a protective behind-the-scenes prince. And like a sitting duck in a horror flick, Lena’s artist beau (Jesse Williams, a flashy cross between Jude Law and Derek Jeter) is a guaranteed goner once he confesses to not believing in “The One.” Surely, though, not saintly Brian McBrian! He’s played, in a nice surprise, by Asian actor Leonardo Nam but doesn’t get much screen time once his Trojan ruptures. As with the first adaptation, the chief pleasure remains the spot-on casting of the leads. They may lack dimensionality, but the characters are, generally, as likable as their literary counterparts. Tamblyn pulls off her funny bits, Bledel is appropriately fragile (if a tad stiff), and Ferrera shines, in particular her scenes onstage as Shakespeare’s Perdita. Lively, the reigning queen of YA adaptations with her role on TV’s Gossip Girl, unfortunately gets saddled with the true telenovela moments. Not that she’s the only one bordering on camp. Far from it. Kyle MacLachlan, as the theater director looks like he fell off a Clairol Just for Men box, and Blythe Danner does her best Blanche DuBois as Bridget’s grandmother Greta. Then there’s Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog). As a professor at the excavation, she stretches and purrs every line in a voice that makes Lauren Bacall sound like a choirboy (“Archaeology is more than just finding booooooones . . . ”). Guilty charms notwithstanding, by the time the gang heads to Greece, it’s hard not to feel as worn and frayed as the jeans themselves. Indeed, at two hours long, this sequel, like the never-been-washed denim, is ultimately way overripe.
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