The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

The film succeeds on the strength of the four actresses, first and foremost America Ferrera, who beautifully essays the role of narrator Carmen.

An argument could be made that too many bad things happen to the good members of this sisterhood. The movie does occasionally teeter on the brink of soap opera, but then, so does life.

This is not a great film by any means, too filled with stock characters in stock situations for such praise. But if offers screen time for some fine young actresses, and addresses its story to an audience of teen girls who deserve something to identify with.

Of these four plots, the story of Carmen's blended family is by far the most consistently engaging, largely because of the vibrant presence of Ms. Ferrera.

Fortunately, director Ken Kwapis, who's done a lot of briskly unsentimental TV work with young people--"Malcolm in the Middle," most notably--knows how to avoid mawk, keeps the squawk to a minimum, and gets wonderful performances out of at least two of the sisterhood, "Gilmore Girls'" Alexis Bledel as the modest Lena, and America Ferrera ("Real Women Have Curves") as the stubborn Carmen.

By the film's halfway point, the subplots have all started to head in the most obvious directions imaginable, which is too bad, since they all have real potential. Ferrera's story of spending the summer as an out-of-place ethnic element in the milk-white suburbs stays interesting the longest, in large part thanks to her performance.

The girls in 'Traveling Pants' are only mannequins wearing someone else's clothes. They don't get inside your head, let alone your heart.

Setting aside the fact that where each girls story line goes is pretty predictable, I really did enjoy this movie. The acting was better than decent, the plot was cute, and there might have even been a few moving moments.

the inherited strength.. The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants Kwapis's teenage drama might be your typical textbook with the same chapters, but it still is worth reading in a summer breeze. There is a perfect balance of character development and compelling storytelling in here. But unfortunately it still isn't enough to bedazzle the viewers since they are somehow not reliable on each other, in fact at certain points it looks like forcibly imputed and overridden until the emotions grows shallow. The inherited strength that comes in with such a concept is the grippiness and pace that keeps the audience invested since the tale is divided into four different tracks that can have fifteen minutes of busy and competent storyline. And as much as easy it grows to depict these tracks, it is equally difficult to blend them and keep a lose thread for the audience to follow whose credit goes to Kwapis as he has done a tremendous work on that note along with the editing that is sharp and well filtered. Aforementioned, the narration is gripping and adaptive if not subtly layered as it might think. Tamblyn's track is not only fresh and stronger than any others but her performance too is convincing. Bledel's typical formulaic love track is elevated with her decent performance and stunning visuals. Ferrera's three dimensional and a bit faulty character is what helps keep this magical tale more grounded. Lively has possibly the simplest track but her impact due to the performance and the procedure that digs deep into characterization is why it comes up, compared to any others, like a bubble. The procedure also is stretched a bit by Kwapis that shucks away the somewhat potential it had to enter the major league. The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants is just like a summer week, it has its moments and it has its flaws.