IT IS ONLY fair to acknowledge that the four Sisters of the Travelling Pants do set a genuinely good example to teenage girls. Despite the unstoppable march of the avaricious, unsophisticated shoe-fetishists from Sex and the City, there is, it seems, still room for heroines with well-ordered priorities.
As the second film starts, the girls are settling down to their studies in Yale, Brown, NYU and (as prestigious as the other three institutions, apparently) Rhode Island School of Design. Even the swarthy fisherman from the first film ends up going to the London School of Economics. When summer comes, the heroines embark on commendable activities such as Shakespearean drama, archaeology and indie film-making.
But don't get the impression they don't know how to have fun. Indeed, one of the girls - in a serious relationship, of course - even manages to have full sex. And it's not as if the film has some sinister Christian agenda. The sisters don't need God to tell them to balance partying with intellectual pursuits.
Yes sir. The thinking liberal Ticket reader will find SOTP 2 (like its predecessor) ideologically sound from perky beginning to huggy end.
Well, you can probably guess where this is going. The films are well acted by their good-looking cast, and the central concept remains cute: the quartet are bound by a pair of quasi-magic jeans which fit each of their very different bottoms. But the lack of any bad behaviour or properly reprehensible villains deadens the drama to the point of insipidness.
Still, you might want to hang around for Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 19. Think about it. With that sort of educational background, the girls should be running the country (if not the world) by then.
