REVIEWED - THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS: The pants passed around by the four female chums in this anaemic teen weepie are, let us be clear, not undies. It is very much not that kind of film.
The magic garment is a pair of jeans that, against all the odds, fit chubby Carmen (America Ferrara), lithe Bridget (Blake Lively), teeny Lena (Alexis Bledel) and the average-sized Tibby (Amber Tamblyn).
The trousers have the power to forward romance, inspire creativity and generally make stuff happen. In a particularly cringeworthy scene it is even suggested that they may be able to cure cancer. Neither Ken Kwapis's film, nor, presumably, Ann Brashares's source novel, is aimed at cynics.
In Pants' defence, half the principal cast is excellent. Ferrara, so good in 2002's otherwise drippy Real Women Have Curves, is touching as a half-Puerto Rican girl who copes badly with her father's decision to remarry a hyper-suburban Wasp. And Tamblyn does equally good work as a sulky goth making a documentary about the ghastliness of everything. Unfortunately Tamblyn has to cope with the film's most mawkish and manipulative subplot. Sometime after Tibby's three friends have vanished for the summer, she happens upon a younger girl passed out in the aisle of the supermarket where the budding documentarist works.
When Tibby eventually gets to film school she will learn an unhappy truth about the manifestation of illness in the cinema: fainting is - rigor mortis aside - the only symptom more grave than coughing into a bloody handkerchief. Her friendship with the tyke is short-lived.
Anyway, the rest of the flick is all dreamy boys and awful sulks and letters decorated with pink hearts. But it argues quite forcefully in favour of tolerance, diversity and not being awful to your dad, all of which are things we approve of. So, while being unlikely to appeal to anybody outside its target audience, Pants is not total pants.
