It’s been a long time since I’ve watched any so-called coming-of-age movies. There are a couple of reasons for this, the main one being that I simply don’t fit the target demographic anymore. In addition, I find that these movies are seldom done well and the plots, situations, and outcomes are usually very predictable. Nevertheless, I’d heard some good things about the 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, so I decided to give it a try this weekend.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is about a group of four teenage girls who have been friends since “before birth”. Their mothers met at a yoga class for pregnant women, and as the girls, Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget, get older, they hardly ever spend a day apart.

However, that’s all about to change as they will spend the summer in four vastly different locations doing different things. The only things that will bond them together during this time are their letters and a magical pair of jeans that fits each one of them perfectly despite their obvious size differences. Each girl will have possession of the jeans for a week, and then pass it along to the next girl on the list.

Tibby, played by Amber Tamblyn, is an aspiring filmmaker who decides to stay home for the summer. She took a job at a local Wal-Mart clone to earn money so she can make a documentary about the people around her as they lead their lives of “quiet desperation.” Tibby’s view is cynical to the extreme, and she seems more intent on showing these people up as losers than anything else.

But she soon meets a younger girl named Bailey (Jenna Boyd) who will change all that. Bailey attaches herself to Tibby and insists on becoming her assistant for the film. While Tibby asks her interview subjects questions laced with sarcasm, Bailey always sees the positive in what people do and tries to make them feel good. At first Tibby gets annoyed by the way Bailey handles the interviews, but she slowly comes around. Her transformation is gradual and believable.

Lena goes to Greece to stay with her grandparents and work on her drawings. While there, she meets a guy named Kostas who interests her, but soon learns that her grandparents are embroiled in a feud with his grandparents. While it’s not quite the Montagues and the Capulets, Lena is forbidden to see him. Of course she does so anyway, and in the end convinces her grandparents to relent.

Carmen (America Ferrera), whose mother is Puerto Rican and father is Caucasian, hasn’t seen much of her dad since her parents divorced. She is very excited about the prospect of spending quality time with Al (Bradley Whitford) over the summer, but is shocked to learn that he has a whole new family now. He’s getting married to a woman who has two teenagers of her own, and never even mentioned this fact to Carmen. Carmen is willing to roll with it and give the new family a chance, but she soon sees that her father is more involved with them than he ever has been with her. She feels like an outsider and eventually just goes back home.

After talking with Tibby, Carmen realizes that it’s ok to tell her father that she’s disappointed in him and that he’s failed her. It’s hard for Carmen to do because she idolizes him so much, but she eventually gets the words out, and that saves their relationship.

Bridget (Blake Lively) goes off to soccer camp in Mexico and almost immediately sets her sights on one of the coaches. It’s against the rules for players and coaches to fraternize, but Bridget is relentless in her pursuit of him. She eventually does get him, but feels terrible afterwards. Her friends realize Bridget’s behavior is partly a reaction to her mother7s recent suicide, so they rally to help her.

My Reaction: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a pretty good movie and I thought it worked for several reasons. First, the situations that the girls found themselves in (and their subsequent reactions) were all believable. I liked the fact that not everything worked out perfectly, and I liked that the girls discovered some difficult-to-face truths about themselves. Second, I thought the actresses in this film all turned in excellent performances. They were obviously central to the success or failure of the movie, so thumbs up to the casting department for the choices here.

I know this movie was based on a book (or a series of books), so maybe the connection of the Traveling Pants was explained better in the original material. The pants barely played a role in the film, so I wonder why it needed to be included in the story? Did things happen only when the girls were wearing the jeans? I remember that Lena meets Kostas when the jeans get caught underwater, and I remember Carmen was wearing the jeans at her father’s wedding. But I don’t recall the major events that happened when the other girls were wearing the jeans.

At any rate, I give The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 4 stars out of 5. It’s one of the better young adult movies I’ve seen in a long time!