Please don't let this horribly cheesy title keep you away from this cinematic treasure! Writing this review two days after see the movie, and I'm still crying. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is the kind of title that evokes Disney Channel movies staring Mickey Mouse Club members (or worse, Hillary Duff), but I swear to you that this movie is so much more. I was in tears from beginning to end as I saw my own insecurities and fears addressed in each one of these characters.
First, there\'s CARMEN (America Ferrera), the writer, the Puerto Rican, the "curvey" one (I HATE that word), and the one who spends the summer with her father and his new family. Carmen's weight issues and "absentee father" issues hit home to me. In fact, the first tears I shed in this movie came at the moment that Carmen drives up to her father's house and learns that he is getting remarried... to a women he lives with... whom Carmen had never met, nor even heard of before. I learned only a few months ago, over the phone no less, that my father was remarried, and it's still not something he's talked to me about. Carmen uses the magical "traveling pants" to get the courage to finally tell her father how sad she is and how much he's hurt her, and this was the point in the movie that had me BALLING.
Lena (Alexis Bledel) is the soft-spoken and shy beauty who spends the summer with her grandparents in Greece. I definitely relate to Lena in her what's the word modesty. She doesn't wear revealing clothes, she's not open to new love, and she has an overall fear of intimacy. With the help of \"the pants\", she meets a beautiful Greek man named Kostas (Michael Rady) and learns to let love it.
Bridget (Blake Lively) is the tall, blond, and extremely confidant soccer star who spends the summer in Baja California, Mexico, at a soccer camp, where she spends most of her time trying to seduce her soccer coach Eric (Mike Vogel). She's also still grieving the loss of her mother who killed herself. For most of the film, I felt no connection to Bridget at all (tall, blond, and athletic, I am not). But it eventually hit me. Bridget's persistent pursuit of Eric and her determination to excel at soccer are her means of hiding from her pain. Her main motivation in life is to numb the pain of her mother's death. Who can't relate to that? Tibby's (Amber Tamblyn) storyline is the most surprising. I didn't expect to be so moved. Tibby is stuck at home for the summer, working at a Walgreens-like drugstore, filming a documentary (or as she calls it, a "suckumentary"), and generally hating life and humanity while her friends travel around the world. The traveling pants are accidentally sent to the wrong address, and a little girl named Bailey (Jenna Boyd) finds them and returns them to Tibby. Bailey is intrigued by Tibby's "suckumentary" and volunteers to help with the film. Though she annoys Tibby at first, Bailey turns out to be extremely soulful and has a real gift for discovering each person's humanity and connecting to anyone. This little girl single-handedly steals the movie, and Jenna Boyd is gifted beyond her years.
This is NOT a chick flick, this isn't a teeny-pop film, and there's NO Hillary Duff or Lindsay Lohan anywhere in sight. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is about the fears and insecurities that all young people feel as they enter adulthood, boys and girls. We all have to deal with our bodies, with our parents, with love, and with death, and this film deals with all of these issues with honesty, sensitivity, and maturity. And most importantly, this movie reinstates the fact that none of us has to deal with these issues alone.
First, there\'s CARMEN (America Ferrera), the writer, the Puerto Rican, the "curvey" one (I HATE that word), and the one who spends the summer with her father and his new family. Carmen's weight issues and "absentee father" issues hit home to me. In fact, the first tears I shed in this movie came at the moment that Carmen drives up to her father's house and learns that he is getting remarried... to a women he lives with... whom Carmen had never met, nor even heard of before. I learned only a few months ago, over the phone no less, that my father was remarried, and it's still not something he's talked to me about. Carmen uses the magical "traveling pants" to get the courage to finally tell her father how sad she is and how much he's hurt her, and this was the point in the movie that had me BALLING.
Lena (Alexis Bledel) is the soft-spoken and shy beauty who spends the summer with her grandparents in Greece. I definitely relate to Lena in her what's the word modesty. She doesn't wear revealing clothes, she's not open to new love, and she has an overall fear of intimacy. With the help of \"the pants\", she meets a beautiful Greek man named Kostas (Michael Rady) and learns to let love it.
Bridget (Blake Lively) is the tall, blond, and extremely confidant soccer star who spends the summer in Baja California, Mexico, at a soccer camp, where she spends most of her time trying to seduce her soccer coach Eric (Mike Vogel). She's also still grieving the loss of her mother who killed herself. For most of the film, I felt no connection to Bridget at all (tall, blond, and athletic, I am not). But it eventually hit me. Bridget's persistent pursuit of Eric and her determination to excel at soccer are her means of hiding from her pain. Her main motivation in life is to numb the pain of her mother's death. Who can't relate to that? Tibby's (Amber Tamblyn) storyline is the most surprising. I didn't expect to be so moved. Tibby is stuck at home for the summer, working at a Walgreens-like drugstore, filming a documentary (or as she calls it, a "suckumentary"), and generally hating life and humanity while her friends travel around the world. The traveling pants are accidentally sent to the wrong address, and a little girl named Bailey (Jenna Boyd) finds them and returns them to Tibby. Bailey is intrigued by Tibby's "suckumentary" and volunteers to help with the film. Though she annoys Tibby at first, Bailey turns out to be extremely soulful and has a real gift for discovering each person's humanity and connecting to anyone. This little girl single-handedly steals the movie, and Jenna Boyd is gifted beyond her years.
This is NOT a chick flick, this isn't a teeny-pop film, and there's NO Hillary Duff or Lindsay Lohan anywhere in sight. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is about the fears and insecurities that all young people feel as they enter adulthood, boys and girls. We all have to deal with our bodies, with our parents, with love, and with death, and this film deals with all of these issues with honesty, sensitivity, and maturity. And most importantly, this movie reinstates the fact that none of us has to deal with these issues alone.