The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Title: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Movie)

Director: Ken Kwapis

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Copyright: 2005

Genre: Fiction

Age Range: 14+

Watcher’s Annotation: Four teenaged girlfriends separate for the first summer of their lives but stay connected through one pair of pants.

Plot Summary: Four teenage girls, Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen, are best friends. They are about to separate for the first summer that they can ever remember. Lena is going to visit her grandparents in Greece. Tibby is staying home. Bridget is going to a soccer camp in Mexico. Carmen is visiting her dad in South Carolina. One the last day before the big break up, they go shopping and find a magical pair of jeans. It was magical because it fit all of them perfectly in spite of their very different forms and figures. They call them the Traveling Pants and will send them across the world on their journey. The next day everyone but Tibby leaves.

            Lena meets another Greek-American named Kostas Dounas that she finds out his family is a bitter Kaligaris enemy from a family feud long ago. Ignoring this old feud, the develop feelings for each other even though Lena holds back due to her fear of love. They keep a secret relationship that is found out to the anger of her family. On his last day, Lena is given permission to see Kostas. Confessing her love, she kisses him goodbye.

            Tibby gets a job working at a discount store. One day she hears a crash and a young girl passes out. Tibby calls for help and the girl is taken to the hospital. Lena mails the pants to Tibby, but the magic pants end up at Bailey’s house, the girl who passed out. In retrieving the pants, Tibby gets to know her and lets Bailey be her assistant to her movie that she is making, or "suckumentary." Annoyed at first, Tibby gets to know and like Bailey. Tibby learns she has leukemia. Bailey gets a bad infection and is hospitalized. Tibby avoids the hospital out of fear, but eventually goes to visit Bailey with the pants. Tibby tries to get Bailey to take them to help heal her, but Bailey tells Tibby that her friendship was the magic of the pants. A couple of days later, Mrs. Graffman, Bailey's mother, tells Tibby that Bailey died. Carmen comes back from South Carolina and vistis Tibby. Due to Tibby’s shock, Carmen accuses her of being emotionless sending Tibby away in tears. They make up and head over to Bridget’s to help with her depression.   

            Bridget’s adventure has to do with a boy. At the soccer camp in Mexico, she develops a crush on a coach named Eric. She tells Eric that a psychiatrist who saw her after her mother’s suicide labeled her reckless as a way of not dealing with her mom’s death. Her will to begin a relationship with Eric can be seen as that type of recklessness since campers and coaches are not to fraternize. When Bridget gets the pants, she walks around outside Eric’s cabin, and they spend the evening on the beach. Bridget feels restless and empty about the encounter and heads home. The other girls arrive shortly after she gets back to cheer her up. The girls reassure Bridget that she is a stronger person than her mother. Eric visits Bridget and apologizes for how he acted over the summer. He tells her that she is too young for him now, but to call him in a few years. 

            Carmen goes to her dad's house in South Carolina. She is introduced to the family her dad is joining. They are all very Southern White people that are the opposite to her very Puerto Rican mother. The whole time in South Carolina, Carmen feels emotionally neglected and snubbed to the point of breaking the dining room window and catching a bus back to Maryland. Tibby convinces Carmen to confront her dad on the phone. Everything gets smoothed over with her dad, and all four attend the wedding with a public apology to Carmen at the reception.

Critical Evaluation: As a popular book, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was also a very popular movie. It is a good companion to the book as part of a collection. The movie instills a lot of different values. One does not always need to listen to old fights in the family. One never knows when they will meet a friend. No one is destined to be just like their parents. No one deserves to be ignored by their family, and it is okay to speak up about their feelings even if it is to your parents. There are a lot of live lessons that this movie contains.

Director’s Information: Ken Kwapis is an award-winning director who has moved easily between the worlds of feature filmmaking and television directing. He most recently directed the Warner Bros. comedy "License to Wed" starring Robin Williams, Mandy Moore and John Krasinski. He previously directed "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," a film adaptation of Ann Brashares' best-selling novel, starring Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively and Alexis Bledel. Kwapis is in pre-production to direct the film adaptation of Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's non-fiction bestseller, "He's Just Not That Into You," for New Line Cinema.

            Kwapis studied filmmaking at Northwestern University and The University of Southern California. He won the Student Academy Award in Dramatic Achievement for his USC thesis film "For Heaven's Sake," an adaptation of Mozart's one-act comic opera Der Schauspieldirektor ("The Impresario").

Curriculum Ties: Psychology

Challenge Issues: Suicidal Thoughts

Movie Talk Ideas: Clothes – One could start talking about different clothes and how they fit different people in different ways. Using the example of jeans, they could transition into the connection of the four characters in the movie.