Welcome to lớn the JOE-DOWN, a back-and-forth movie đánh giá blog by two snarky newspapermen named Joe from Minnesota, Joe Froemming và Joe Brown. We will take turns selecting a movie — any movie we want — and review it here. For this installment, Brown picked “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.”
The info:
The Movie: “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2”
Starring: America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn
Director: Sanaa Hamri
Plot Summary: (From IMDB) Four college freshmen & best friends find that it may take more than a shared pair of jeans to help them stay in cảm biến as their lives go in different directions.
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Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 65 percent
Our take:Brown: I think it’s time to lớn trade the pair of spandex we had lớn wear for all that nhảy in “Staying Alive” for a pair of of pants.
Magical pants.
Overly bedazzled pants that don’t get washed among four people và still defy lô ghích by fitting four people with distinct toàn thân types.
Froemming, it’s time to revisit the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Nearly three years ago, we met the sisterhood for the first time. We lamented. We raged. Hell, I even made up a scenario where one of the characters was so lonely she invented her own leukemia-stricken Tyler Durden.
The original nearly broke up. Nearly ended the friendship between Froemming and I.
So this time around, I wanted the sequel to lớn finish the job because I want to lớn watch the world burn. I feel that way mostly because I’m still irritated by the fact that these four girls found jeans that fit so well while I’m visibly flustered any time I go clothes shopping, even on Amazon.
So Froemming, while I pester my dad khổng lồ use his frequent flyer miles, give us your initial thoughts.
Froemming:
There is one positive thing I can say about this sequel that nobody asked for: It is not as grating as the first one. But, I need khổng lồ make this point, I still envy Bridget’s mom in this for taking herself out before having to lớn witness any of this.
Brown: Jesus Christ, dude…
Froemming: You wanted angry Froemming? YOU GOT ANGRY FROEMMING!
Also, they have not washed these pants in what? Five years now. Four? Ass swamp would cause these four friends lớn be shunned by society for smelling lượt thích a bunch of soiled diapers mix ablaze.
Why don’t you kick this off, Brown, while I weep silently at my desk.
Brown: We get a brief look back at the previous movie narrated by Carmen, và she literally uses the line “As far back as I can remember…” lượt thích she was (REDACTED) Henry Hill in “Goodfellas.” và immediately, I wished we were watching THAT movie. Because it’s the best.
Froemming: Not as good as “Pallies.”
Brown: Anyways…
We find out what our foursome is up lớn now.
Bridget: She’s playing soccer at Brown. Somehow I bet she got into that Ivy League school thanks khổng lồ her Aunt Becky paying someone to lớn affect her SAT scores.
Tibby: She’s pursuing her moving-making dream at NYU.
Lena: She’s still going khổng lồ Greece a lot… I dunno. At least I remembered her name in this movie, so slight edge lớn the sequel?
Carmen: Well, she’s at Yale and she’s all mopey. I feel no sympathy for her because she’s just another one in this bunch at a prestigious school. She’s mopey about being in the Ivy League, making this movie “First World Problems 2: Electric Boogaloo.”
Froemming: I was wondering how such prestigious schools would let in four people who believe in magic pants. Then I remembered Mitt Romney, who believes in magic underwear, and this guy got into Harvard.
Brown: We hit our first stag with Lena, who breaks up with her Greek bae from the first movie, Kostas. I mean, it makes sense. It was a summer fling & you live across an ocean.
And then Lena acts all indignant when when Kostas moves on and gets a girl knocked up.
Look, I’d be weirded out seeing an ex with someone who’s preggers. But you don’t get to be all irritated lượt thích you’ve been done wrong. You wish them well, you give an awkward hug, you get blind, stinking drunk lamenting over it and then YOU MOVE ON, LENA.
Froemming: The subtitle of this movie should be “Four friends who would lượt thích to speak to lớn your manager.” Because that is how entitled these little snots are.
Also, this movie has characters flying to lớn Greece and back to lớn the U.S. Like it is a half hour trek. One, it isn’t, so this movie can go ahead và suck it. Và two, that is not cheap airfare. Nothing about these girls’ homes or homelife tells me their parents are a Hilton or a Trump, so how the (REDACTED) are they jet setting across the world?
You know what? I am not getting snagged in the weeds of this stupid movie. Lượt thích Bridget’s mom, I want to end this quickly.
So we get one last day in wherever the hell they live, we see Tibby (the edgy one, because she works in a clip store. I am glad streaming killed her career) has moved on in life after her Tyler Durden, Baily, has been shot out of her brain. She is dating Brian, who I think is really good at the arcade classic “Dragon’s Lair 3D,” which Brown và I loved to lớn play in arcades! Right Brown! RIGHT? “Dragon’s Lair 3D” was such an arcade classic! I think we also played a lot of it on our Game
Boy DS!
Brown: They play ports of arcade games. Inferior ports.
And sure, let’s go through each girl’s journey lượt thích we did in the first movie.
With that, let’s go to edge lord Tibby.
Tibby is working in a video clip store, which is a concept that is somehow more outdated than newspapers. Shoutout khổng lồ the lone Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon. Of course hipsters were the ones that kept a video store alive.
Anyhow, Brian is really into her and they celebrate their anniversary through the romantic act of bangin’.
But we have a problem: the condom broke. Apparently Brian used an old condom his uncle gave him at his high school graduation. Surely, that condom left an indent in his wallet because it had been in there THAT long. Why would I know something lượt thích that? No comment…
Froemming:
Brown: Dude, Brian, you’re on the NYU campus. There HAS lớn be a campus clinic that has fresh condoms just sitting in a fish bowl.
How does Tibby respond to lớn a potential pregnancy scare? By sheltering herself into her apartment surrounded by pizza boxes. So great, I live the same way depressed Tibby does.
Froemming:
Next we have Bridget, who is going off to Turkey to lớn join a terrorist organization that radicalized her via the Internet.
Brown: Oh my god, yes! It’s made out to lớn be an archeological dig but they open her visit into Turkey with every propaganda shot an American has seen in an “ISIS recruitment video.”
Froemming: We also have her still suffering the PTSD of her mom’s suicide, và her anger at her father.
Brown, was it me, or was the acting between father và daughter here incredibly bad? Like, worse than a Lifetime movie bad?
Brown: It wasn’t great. It’s even more jarring to know that these movies are not the worst acting we’ve seen from Blake Lively on the JOE-DOWN. That would go lớn “Green Lantern” without reservation.
Froemming: While packing her her journey to denounce the U.S. And marry in a radicalized terrorist cell, Bridget finds letters from her grandmother, which her father hid in a box in clear sight. Either she is really stupid or he is bad at hiding things. Or, I assume, it can be two things.
So she yells at her traumatized father và heads off to declare jihad on the West.
Next we have Lena. Nobody cares about this, it is just as pointless as the first movie, so I am skipping it.
Finally we have Carmen, who heads lớn Vermont with her actress friend khổng lồ work on a community theatre play that takes itself way too seriously & is directed by Special Agent Dale Cooper from “Twin Peaks.”
I felt bad for Kyle Mac
Lachlan here. One day you are in critically acclaimed David Lynch movies và “Showgirls,” the next you are in a movie about magic pants.
Brown: As a “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet” superfan, what was your reaction lớn seeing Mac
Lachlan on screen, Froemming? Also, how surprised were you lớn find out this was an uncredited role?
Froemming: I was flabbergasted. But, he did have a revival as both the Mayor on “Portlandia” and on the “Twin Peaks” revival, so he came out OK.
I am guessing the uncredited part was a request from him, & I don’t blame him. I kinda want my name stricken from this đánh giá because I am also embarrassed this is now connected khổng lồ my life.
Brown: The internet is forever, Froemming. You don’t get off that easily.
So yeah, Carmen’s story. She goes to Vermont lớn an acting camp because she’s the Tibby of this movie & is all bummed her friends are doing, you know, cool stuff for the summer. Working as a stagehand at NYU, she will be doing the same in Vermont thanks to her friend Julia, who while not the same actress, looked suspiciously lượt thích Karen Page from “Daredevil”/”The Punisher.”
At this camp, they are performing Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale.” Why they’re doing this in the summer, I haven’t a clue. After accidently dropping a curtain on one of the leads, Ian, she gets talked into auditioning for Perdita và knocks it out of the park?
I thought it was a ho-hum audition, but what bởi vì I know. Plus, Ian helped because he’s got a little Harvey Weinstein in him.
Naturally, Carmen develops feelings for Ian, who is trying & failing so hard at being Heath Ledger.
Froemming: And like Heath Ledger, I bet Ian was looking to check out in 2008 after this movie came out.
Brown:
Brown: Hopefully Tibby reimbursed Lena for the chạy thử because she didn’t even need to use it.
What I hated the most about this whole pregnancy storyline is how much this movie vilified the idea of having a child. Yes, having a child is terrifying but this movie legit treats it lượt thích you’re sprouting the chestburster from “Alien.” This movie makes childbearing as bad as “Bohemian Rhapsody” made homosexuality out lớn be for Freddie Mercury. It’s really kind of (REDACTED) up.
Tibby was the one I had the most sympathy for in the original. Honestly, I don’t know if I had sympathy for anyone in this movie. Hell, even Lena’s sister is an unlikable ass in this for being the irritating younger sibling.
Froemming: Well, lượt thích Lena, her sister’s face is too small for her head, so at least that made sense with genetics & all.
So Tibby isn’t pregnant. She wants khổng lồ make amends with Brian, but he is dating Lena’s little sister, which feels lượt thích it should be illegal, lượt thích Bridget’s romp in Mexico with the soccer coach in the first movie.
Speaking of Bridget, so she heads to Turkey, finds some skulls, befriends an older woman who tells her the importance of family or whatever, và she starts reading her grandma’s cards lớn her, which also contain money.
Don’t cash all those checks at once, Bridget, she may have had money at the time, but you could bankrupt her now.
So she flies to Alabama, because these girls have gold plated credit cards to bởi all this traveling…
Wait, have we mentioned the magic pants yet? No? Well, that’s because this movie seemed to also forget about them & shoehorned them toward the middle-end of the film. Hell, we didn’t even see them until a half-hour in.
It is as if this movie is not very good.
Brown: Well, before they all head off for the summer, they vì take part in their pants tradition of breaking into a yoga studio, eating junk food and listening khổng lồ 80s music while discussing the pants.
That is a dumb, dumb, dumb tradition. Bedazzled pants are not an excuse to commit breaking and entering.
Because you refuse lớn touch on it, I’ll explain Lena’s story quick.
Froemming:
Brown: So she’s at an art school for the summer và a recurring part of this is nude model drawing with this strapping lad named Leo who keeps making creepy eye liên hệ with Lena while she’s shading his penis or something. Well, no, she’s too modest to lớn ever draw that part of his body. Somehow, they hit it off but Lena hits a tốc độ bump when Kostas flies to lớn America to lớn explain his situation: Yes, he knocked up that Greek broad but he doesn’t love her. He was finally able lớn break it off và he still has feelings for Lena.
Hey Lord Humongous, what should these two idiotic love birds do with this relationship?
Eventually, they kết thúc up together.
For your sanity’s sake, Froemming, should we sum up this quartet’s individual stories before getting to the ending in Greece?
Froemming: Yes.
Carmen and Julia have a falling out. Julia is jealous of Carmen và goes on a date with Ian. This causes Carmen to lớn suck at acting. Everything works out, Carmen’s mom has a baby và Ian carves his face up và moves to lớn Gotham city to kill the Batman.Bridget meets her grandma & finds out that her mom was bipolar, và that lead khổng lồ the problems with her father & her grandmother. She make sup with her father in another terrible acting scene.Tibby isn’t pregnant. But she still sucks as a person & I wish only the worst for her.Brown: OK, I’m starting to lớn get worried about you, Froemming.
Froemming: So Lena, who has money lying around, just ups và FLIES to GREECE to FIND A PAIR OF PANTS.
Brown: Through this movie, we’ve seen Bridget fly to the Middle East and Alabama before returning trang chủ to Maryland (I think?), Lena fly to và from Greece two times và the rest of them ALSO head khổng lồ Greece on a whim.
This makes me extremely salty as someone who has to budget for a long time before even contemplating a flight. And they go to lớn foreign countries for a (REDACTED) pair or ratty pants that all four of them are not into doing anymore.
While I’m at it… OK, let’s say I buy into the mularkey that the pants fit all four girls in the first movie. That’s not happening in the second movie. The Freshman 15 is a real thing for everyone. I’m not buying for a second that all four of these ladies can still fit into pants they wore in high school. It’d be more believable if this were the Sisterhood of the Traveling Oversized Hoodie.
Froemming: Unlike Brown, I won’t resort khổng lồ fat-shaming.
Brown: *Sigh* I hate you.
Froemming: So they all fly lớn Greece on Carmen’s dad or step-dad’s frequent flyer miles…
WHO HAS THAT MANY MILES lớn FLY THREE PEOPLE ROUND-TRIP lớn EUROPE?
And they get there, and they want khổng lồ hook Lena up with her ex who has a child with another woman. What happened to Leo? I dunno, the movie just ignores that I think. Seemed lượt thích a nice guy, clean apartment và looked lượt thích an excellent cook. He’s not missing out on this toxic codependent friendship Lena is trapped in with three other sociopaths. Run, Leo, run like Forrest Gump escaping bullies and find yourself a better life.
Brown: I kept expecting that Kostas had the pants because he hooked up with Lena’s little sister. I mean, he knocked up one girl already & left her high & dry.
Apparently these pants — which at one point in the summer they all just pushed aside — are SO important they make flyers for them and search for, what, a week? What a hellish life you live when you can spend a week in Greece searching for (REDACTED) jeans you could reenact with a visit khổng lồ Forever 21 & a glue gun.
Froemming: These college students are in Greece for at least five days. Again, where is this money coming from?
Brown: It comes from inheritance from Bridget’s dead mother, I assume?
Quick aside, I just found this out on IMDB: the person who plays Bridget’s dad… Blake Lively’s dad… is Erin Lively, Blake’s actual father.
How the (REDACTED) bởi those two have such little chemistry between one another when they’re actually flesh-and-blood related?!
Froemming: Maybe the old man just hates his daughter in real life? I dunno. Or he is not a trained actor, which would probably be more likely.
Brown: He’s a (REDACTED) acting coach!
Froemming: You know too much about the Lively family and I am now worried about Blake.
Anyway, Lena hooks up with her old flame and the pants are gone forever, meaning we don’t have another one of these garbage movies to sit through. Why don’t we hop on a plane a fly over khổng lồ recommendations?
WOULD YOU RECOMMEND?Brown: Naw. I’m good without revisiting this series. Also, Froemming post-“Traveling Pants” kind of scares me.
Alexis Bledel as Lena; Amber Tamblyn as Tibby; America Ferrera as Carmen; Blake Lively as Bridget; Jesse Williams as Leo; Michael Rady as Kostos; Blythe Danner as Greta; Rachel Nichols as Julia; Lucy Hale as Effie; Leonardo nam giới as Brian; Tom Wisdom as IanMovie Review
Three years have passed since Lena, Tibby, Bridget và Carmen—the sisterhood from Ann Brashares’ young adult novels—first appeared on movie screens. In that time, the girls have graduated from high school and moved on lớn four different colleges. Their friendship is still intact; but, lượt thích the pair of xanh jeans they all share, it’s beginning to ravel around the edges. With distance, busyness, romance & growing pains tugging at each of the young ladies, the summer after their freshman year of college becomes a make-or-break time.
Budding artist Lena is taking art classes through the summer. Her heart is broken when she learns that her Greek first love, Kostos, has married someone else. Bridget, whose mother committed suicide just prior to the opening of the first movie, is still running from that reality. This time it’s she who is planning lớn spend the summer on the other side of the world—at an archaeology camp in Turkey. Tibby is in thủ đô new york City, still hoping to become a film director, but settling instead for peddling other directors’ films at a đoạn clip store.
Carmen, who narrates the story, had cleared her summer schedule in hopes of spending the time re-bonding with her old pals. Once she discovers that they’ve all made other plans, she escapes to lớn a summer-long theater workshop in New England. In Carmen’s words, this summer is about each of the girls learning “how to become ourselves without losing each other.”
Positive Elements
Lifelong, through-thick-and-thin friendships are the stitches that hold the Traveling Pants sisterhood together. This second film installment explores what happens as young friends grow up. Things aren’t always easy, & it takes hard work khổng lồ make a friendship weather the transition into adulthood. Thus, honesty, loyalty, forgiveness & unconditional love are lauded as essentials in the toolbox of life.
Our heroines also work through some difficult family situations with universally positive results. At first, Carmen feels displaced because her mother has remarried, is pregnant and is moving out of Carmen’s childhood home. (This is as much the reason for her running away khổng lồ New England as is the absence of her girlfriends.) In the end, though, Carmen agonizes over how lớn help take care of her mother as she gives birth to Carmen’s half-brother, và Mama reaffirms her special love for Carmen, her firstborn.
Lena and her sister, Effie, experience some sibling fireworks because Little Sis feels left out of Lena’s inner circle. But those two are also able khổng lồ resolve their differences. Bridget và her emotionally distant father build bridges, và a reunion with her estranged maternal grandmother helps bring closure & healing after Bridget’s mother’s death.
Through a difficult experience, Tibby learns that “not everyone you love is going to lớn leave you.” Once she begins to believe this, she is able to start trusting people more. A brief shout-out is given to lớn the benefit of face-to-face relationships as opposed to lớn ones conducted by email and other technologies.
Spiritual Elements
Fate is referenced several times as the force responsible for bringing the pants—which, strangely, fit all four girls—to the sisterhood. At the beginning of each summer the girls hold a ceremony of sorts to lớn commence the traveling of the pants among them. We don’t see them pray, but they talk about prayer being a part of that ritual. Audiences get the impression that they pray to the pants (an idea which is later confirmed when we see Tibby don the jeans và repeat “give me a miracle,” followed by a shot of her in a meditation pose).
Portions of a Catholic graveside service are shown, but the dialogue is in Greek, so most American viewers won’t understand what’s being said. Mourners genuflect during the service. A reference is made khổng lồ asking God for help.
Sexual Content
All of the film’s starlets don low-cut outfits. Carmen’s storyline involves several stage productions in which actresses wear period clothing that bares and accentuates the đứng đầu half of their bosoms. Bridget is shown in a sports bra.
Lena’s drawing class includes multiple sessions with a nude male model. We see him drop his pants and kick off his shorts. (His private parts, & only his private parts, are kept out of the camera’s view.) Later, Tibby says to Lena, “He’s a nude model, not a porn star,” and requests a copy of Lena’s sketch. The model’s name is Leo, và after making a joke about Lena being a virgin to model drawing, he ends up asking her out. They kiss several times. It’s also implied that Lena may have lost her virginity in an all-night rendezvous with her old flame, Kostos. A couple is said lớn have gotten married because they have a baby on the way. Later, we learn that their marriage has been annulled.
<Spoiler Warning> Tibby’s major crisis is a pregnancy scare. She & her boyfriend, Brian, have been dating for 10 months. He plans a special night to lớn celebrate that “anniversary” and it ends up with them kissing on the bed in his apartment. When she allows him to “go further” than he had expected, he asks whether she wants lớn have sex for the first time. She does. He then enthusiastically begins khổng lồ take off his clothes (no skin is shown) as the two continue to lớn make out.
Cut to the morning after. Tibby is sitting on the bed (clothed) và Brian is in the shower in the adjacent bathroom. He comes out in a towel và announces that they have a problem: His condom, which he had been carrying around for two years, broke during sex. So Tibby spends the next several weeks of her summer worrying she might be pregnant. The film explores some of the practical & emotional implications of her conundrum—being mad at Brian and subsequently ignoring him, even though he expresses a desire khổng lồ be involved in her life, especially if she’s pregnant. & asking Lena to buy her a pregnancy test, then rejoicing with her friend when her period starts and she’s certain she’s not pregnant.
At one point Tibby laments that she wishes she could “take it all back”—meaning that she wishes their sexual encounter had never happened. It’s not clear whether this is a real regret or only one stemming from her fear of pregnancy, but it does begin to lớn convey the gravity of giving away one’s virginity. Và even though it turns out that she’s not pregnant, she acknowledges that things can never “go back to the way they were.”
Violent Content
On a dig site at her archaeology camp, Bridget falls through the floor of a partially excavated structure. Bitter about her rocky relationship, Tibby sarcastically suggests The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to đoạn clip store customers in tìm kiếm of a thắm thiết flick.
Crude or Profane Language
God’s name is used flippantly more than a dozen times; Jesus’ twice. Un-ladylike exclamations include “h—” and “frickin’.” A British character makes use of the crudity “b-llocks.”
Drug & Alcohol Content
Though they are underage, Tibby & Brian celebrate their 10-month milestone with a bottle of wine. Champagne is served at a party, và drinks appear at a funeral.
Other Negative Elements
Considering it the “sacred spot” where their friendship started, Bridget, Carmen, Tibby và Lena break into the aerobics studio where their mothers met during their concurrent pregnancies. They don’t vì any damage, but still, they’re trespassing. Following one’s heart is once held up as the highest standard in relationships. Reference is made lớn a farm animal doing something “way nasty.”
Conclusion
The four leading Sisterhood ladies—Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera and Blake Lively—have grown up a bit since their first Traveling Pants go-around. They’ve also matured as actresses, which makes the film more emotionally compelling than its predecessor. It still has some moments that made me wish for a little more subtlety (perhaps that’s the inevitable result of trying to giảm giá khuyến mãi with heavy issues such as manic depression & suicide in a film aimed at teen và tween girls), but production-wise, it’s at least a modest improvement.
Of course, fans of the Traveling Pants books might not agree. After I finished viewing this film, I was informed by two young theatergoers that while the first movie covered only the first of the four novels, this one attempts to lớn cram books two through four into a single film. The girls I talked with (I’d put them at 12 khổng lồ 14 years old) wondered aloud if this plot compression had confused me. It hadn’t, but it probably means that some elements that feel pretty important lớn fans of the books have been skipped here.
And that brings me lớn my most important take-away from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.
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Ann Brashares và the folks who have made her books into movies have chosen lớn tackle some pretty adult issues: losing one’s virginity; trying lớn wrap a teenage mind around the possibility of pregnancy. These are things that 19-year-olds in our culture really khuyễn mãi giảm giá with. As a thirtysomething with a heart for young women, this makes me ache for the teenagers in my world. But I am not the target demographic for this film. The tween/teen girls who instructed me on the finer points of the Traveling Pants novels are. And for them, Lena, Tibby, Carmen và Bridget aren’t younger sisters to lớn be concerned about. They’re older sisters lớn be looked up to. & while their friendships are worth imitating, many of their other choices aren’t.
Parents, get practical information from a biblical worldview to help guide media decisions for your kids!