I started watching this with very low expectations. I figured it would be based on the fourth book, and I hated the fourth book, so, you know, not all that excited. I came out of it a totally happy person. It seems to me that the screenwriter took everything that was wrong with the fourth book and fixed it. True, I would have liked to see Win, but that's, imo, the only thing the movie really lacked. The acting was great, the chemistry was astounding (and here everyone was saying the girls didn't want to do this!), the storylines, amazing amazing amazing. Upon reading book 4, I was highly disappointed that they lost the pants, but now, watching the movie, I see why it had to happen.
Random comments:
-Alexis Bledel makes a much better Lena than a Rory. She's so much more natural as a quiet, down-to-earth girl, rather than Ms. Spoiled Rotten.
-LOVED Amber Tamblyn's acting, she's been the best part of both movies. Her and Brian are just too cute, and her 'miracle' moment was probably my favorite of the entire movie.
-Glad they kept Labor Coach Tibby in!
-Best lines? Tie between "And leave me in the middle of my life? God!" and "We are terrible at not loving each other." One hilarious, one sweet, both pretty much summarizing the entirety of this movie and real life.
I am not the type to EVER prefer a movie adaptation over a book. I always think the movies cheapen the written word. This is the one exception. Loved it, loved it, LOVED it.
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS2 stars Amber Tamblyn (daughter of the beloved Russ Tamblyn, star of Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, West Side Story, Tom Thumb, and other films), America Ferrera (of "Ugly Betty" fame), Blake Lively, and Alexis Bledel (looks like Keira Knightly, but not emaciated). This is one of my all-time-favorite movies, mostly because of its celebration of people who devote themselves to the arts.
As with Pants-1, the film uses a pair of patched blue jeans as a device that provides a unifying feature to the story. Each girl wears the blue jeans for a while, then mails the blue jeans to the next girl, and the film follows the adventures of each girl in succession. The movie starts with a purse-snatching, but then the camera pans to the right, and we see a movie camera filming the purse-snatching (the purse-snatching was all an act).
Ms. Ferrera, a Yale undergrad has kinds of things going on in her life--her mom is pregnant, and expects to go to Alabama to visit her folks, but she is really destined to go to Vermont be a stage-hand for the summer at the Village Theater Arts Festival.
Then, we see Ms. Bledel at a funeral in Greece, and she encounters her former boyfriend from Pants-1. She is shocked when she discovers that he has gotten married. Then ten minutes into the movie, we see the 4 girls meet with the pants, discussing their plans. Then they disperse -Bledel to Greece to take art lessons, Ferrera to Vermont, Tamblyn to be a videostore clerk in New York City, and Lively to an archeological dig in Turkey. There is actually another major character in the movie, Rachel Nichols (looks just like Renee Zellweger), who provides many interesting sneers, snide remarks, and condescending expressions. In fact, Rachel Nichols provides more quirky expressions than all of the funny, quirky expression from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
COMEDY IN ART CLASS.
Another interesting subtle point is when Ms. Bledel has her first day in the figure drawing class, and the model is a totally naked hunk. (Don't worry, parents, they don't show anything.) Bledel is nervous, talks excessively in a nervous manner, and nervously drops her pencil box. Also, she twiddles her hair nervously.
COMEDY WITH ASIAN BOYFRIEND.
Ms. Tamblyn provides a nice contrast to the other overachieving girls (actress, archeologist, artist). She is just a clerk in a video rental outlet. Her dialogue is about late fees. The film centers around her relationship with her boyfriend. In this movie, they both lose their you-know-what together. Ms. Tamblyn exclaims, "Even though I am a feminist, I still enjoy a box of chocolates." In the same scene, she asks, "Was I the first girl to say yes?" The boyfriend answers, "Of course not. I mean, of course you are!" 30 minutes into the picture is a bit of slapstick. Later on, when Ms.Tamblyn believes herself to be pregnant, she walks down the city street in a daze, and passes a pregnant woman struggling to enter her automobile, and passes a mother fighting with her screaming children (obviously, Ms.Tamblyn is thinking that she has entered Hell).
COMEDY IN THE THEATER.
Ms.Ferrera is back stage tending a curtain raising device, and it spontaneously malfunctions, and the curtain plops on top of actor Tom Wisdom. This event leads to them meeting each other.
COMEDY IN TURKEY.
More comedy comes from Turkey. Ms. Lively is at her archeological dig in Turkey. She finds a mandible (jaw bone), discolored from thousands of years of exposure to the elements. "Should have brushed more!" she exclaims.
HIGH POINT OF THIS MOVIE.
The high point of this movie is Ms.Ferrera's success in being promoted from an apprentice stage hand to giving a well-received performance as the leading lady in a Shakespeare play. While rehearsing her lines in a meadow with Tom Wisdom, Tom observes how people in the United States speak, and how Shakespeare writes: "Instead of saying, 'Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber,' what we say is, 'Catch some ZZZ's.'" And during a rehearsal, Ms.Ferrera delivers her lines so elegantly that Tom Wisdom forgets his lines. Shortly thereafter, the director tells Ms.Ferrera, "Do NOT go to drama school" (referring to the fact that Ms.Ferrera is already an extraordinarily accomplished actress). In my opinion, this particular scene, where Tom Wisdom forgets his lines, is one the greatest scenes in the history of cinema.
OVERRIDING THEME OF THIS FILM.
In addition to the theme of the pants, the movie has this overriding theme--uniting, separation, then uniting again:
(1) Ms. Bledel is separated from her Greek boyfriend from Pants-1 (the boy who saved her from drowing). In Pants2, we find that he has married a woman he does not care for. But at the end of Pants-2, Bledel gets disgusted with the male model hunk, and returns to the first Greek boyfriend, since he had his marriage annuled.
(2) Ms. Lively is separated from her grandmother for 10 years, due to a complicated glitch due to a tragedy involving her mother, and intervention by her father, but in the second half of Pants2, she is reunited with her grandmother, and they become close.
(3) Tamblyn gets separated from her Asian boyfriend, because of that sort of uncomfortableness with the false-alarm pregnancy. But later, they become re-united.
(4) Ferrera is at first close to Tom Wisdom, a young British actor who stars in their play. But betrayal from another character in the movie, Rachel Nichols, leads to uncomfortable feelings. But this is reversed during the course of events.
Buy Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008) Now
I watched this movie as a favor to my wife (she agreed to watch Batman). First of all from a male standpoint, this was definitely a chick flick and I went into it with dread. A story with no car chases, fights, foul language or nudity, how was this going to keep my interest? What you do get is a touching story of 4 young ladies that are life long friends that have moved on and now for the first time are experiencing things on their own for the first time. They each have their own growing pains and find life on their own is more difficult than thought. What ties them together and eventually brings them back together is a pair of pants (see the first movie for more on this). Of course the movie is filled with cliches and is a bit sappy, however at the end of the longest two hours of my life I was still alive and deep down the movie was not as bad as I feared.
Read Best Reviews of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008) Here
I just want to say that as a parent of a pre-teen girl, I was so pleasantly surprised by the way that this film empowered women. I thought it included a message that pre-marital sex has consequences. I have read the books by this author and I can see that the movie changed several things to make the movie less "trashy" than the books. I greatly appreciated that. This was a must see movie for women 13 and above.
Want Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008) Discount?
To me, this movie felt completely like a chick flickfour young ladies make a deal to stay in touch with each other through a pair of pants (yeah, completely true) and to NEVER lose their valuable friendship no matter what happens. Of course the girls eventually go their separate ways as they get older and go to college and meet new people, etc.
The entire movie was basically jumping around between the four ladies separate lives, and we got to see the plots that developed from each lady, and each story. Each story was, I have no trouble admitting, somewhat interesting. It's just that this is the kind of movie young women should be watching, not grown men like me.
I didn't feel like I could relate to any of these mini stories involving the four women, but the heck with thatI liked the storytelling regardless, and believe girls developing into adulthood will find the most interest in this kind of stuff.
I will say this thoughbecause there's basically four different stories going on, young ladies can find a LOT of things about the story to relate to, such as friendship troubles, relationship troubles involving boys, family issues, and other things. For what it is, it's worth watching.
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