Movie capsules coming-of-age flick is good, clean fun

Girls just want to have fun, and here to prove it is an idyllic little epic about the summer after the first year of college. There are things like trips to Turkey and sun-drenched Greece, along with getting the lead role in summer stock, dealing with sex in New York City and blushing over a nude male model in a world where all the requisite boys have sculpted abs and wavy hair.

For the targeted audience - young girls - what's not to like? Clearly, they would rather have their glossy fantasies stroked than to be troubled with anything as ghastly as discussions about grades or who's going to pay next year's tuition.

Maybe the silliest thing about it all is that persistent title, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2," which owes allegiance to the first movie (three years ago) and the books (four of them) that still sell. As dreamed up all the way to the bank by author Ann Brashares, the title refers to a pair of one-size-fits-all jeans that the four best friends pass among themselves for some kind of magical togetherness. It's meant to be a symbol of friendship - the jeans that bind. Wouldn't e-mail work just as well?

Best send the jeans off to the cleaners and lose the claim ticket which, in effect, is what screenwriter Elizabeth Chandler does in this adaptation of the three final books of Brashares' series.

It's all to the good, because what you have is a handful of thoroughly entertaining plots involving "the girls," who are somewhat believably growing into womanhood.

The four actresses from the first movie are back: Amber Tamblyn (Tibby), Alexis Bledel (Lena), America Ferrera (Carmen) and Blake Lively (Bridget). They seem to still get along, although they have few scenes together.

Boys are still rather superficial toys to them - always available, even if sometimes in need of replacement or trading. (Guys, if you go along with your girlfriends to this, you'll learn what's it's like to be treated as no more than a sex object. Hey, you might like it!)

In any case, these four little misses are veritable cheerleaders for friendship. They are an antidote to the movie trend that everyone has to be mean, insulting, gritty or full of angst in order to meet the "sophisticated" quota.

At its best, you might say this is "Sex and the City" for the younger set. At its worst, you might say the rose-colored glasses are blinding.

As a throwback to 1980s brat-pack movies like "St. Elmo's Fire," "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club" or "Pretty in Pink," it is harmless and a good deal more thoughtful than usual for these outings.

You can learn a lot by where the characters went to school. Lena goes to Rhode Island School of Design, where she meets the nude model (Jesse Williams), who is an antidote to the loss of her first love, Kostos (Michael Rady). It all has to be settled with the girls meeting on a Greek island, which, thankfully, is the only Greek island of the movie summer where the people don't break out into ABBA songs all the time.

Carmen goes to Yale School of Drama, where she gains points with us by being the resident ugly duckling - the faithful, open, vulnerable girl who isn't pretty but still gets the lead in a Shakespeare play. (Does it only happen in the movies? We suspect so, but we always pull for "Ugly Betty.") She has a wavy-haired British guy mooning over her even if her blond-evil classmate Rachel Nichols is conniving behind her back. Nichols, though, is not really a villainess. In this movie, there is no evil. It just wouldn't be nice.

Bridget goes on an archaeological dig in Turkey, where the skeletons of dead ancients remind her that family was important even back then. She, lone among the quartet, has no boy, but she has the two professional, adult actresses of the cast: Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo ("House of Sand and Fog") as a wise archaeologist, and feisty Southern grandma Blythe Danner.

Tibby is studying film at New York University and has the film's only real sexual challenge when her hot Asian boyfriend (Leonardo Nam) comes out of the bathroom and announces that the condom malfunctioned. Tamblyn is the only one of the four with real gusto. Working at a video store, she reacts to customers who ask for a romantic film by recommending "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

All of the actresses are not bad and should have a future, if they graduate, quickly, from ensemble things like this.

Thankfully, there isn't much effort to blend the four plots into some kind of friendship mantra. None of these plots could sustain a single movie, but when they are transposed, they keep us guessing as to how everyone is going to manipulate her way to a happy ending.

It's kind of comforting that there is little question about that happy ending. For the summer, when it's just a relief to get into air conditioning and pig out on popcorn, this entry is surprisingly tolerable.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com