Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The (DVD)

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The biggest concern here, though, is that with four characters and four different stories in a two-hour movie, it only gives each story about thirty minutes in which to work. That's not much time to develop the conflicts or the characters. Worse, because the filmmakers crosscut the narrative so often, we hardly get a chance to see anything unfold very far before it's off to another girl's story. The filmmakers managed it the first time around, but not this time.

While the movie and the characters remain as sweet as ever, this time out they're more sugary sweet, more melodramatically sudsy. I mean, there is only so much hugging, kissing, and crying and so much syrupy music a person can take in one movie. "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" has enough of these timeworn, romantic movie ingredients for four such pictures. When the quartet of girls wind up diving off a cliff in the sun-drenched Greek island of Santorini, we get about as far from reality as a film can take us.

Trivia note: If you were to watch this movie back-to-back with "Cast Away," you'd get the longest FedEx commercial in the history of advertising.

Video:
The video quality is fine without distinguishing itself in any particular way. Warners use a anamorphic transfer for the 1.85:1 ratio picture, which ensures intensely rich colors and deep black levels. Definition is OK, varying somewhat from scene to scene. When it's good, the delineation and detailing are excellent; other times, things are a bit too soft. I can't imagine anyone complaining about the way the picture looks, though.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is more nondescript than the video. If the characters didn't speak, you'd hardly know it was there. The soundtrack is front loaded, with most of the dialogue, music, and sound effects coming from the forward channels. Every now and then, you hear some musical bloom in the surrounds as well as the occasional environmental noise--cars, birds, crowds. There is little need for a wide dynamic range or an extended frequency response, so we don't get them. Fortunately, the midrange is smooth and natural, and voices come across realistically.

Extras:
The extras begin with a short, four-and-half-minute featurette, "Go Jump Off a Cliff," which details the origins of the film's climactic scene in Greece. Then there are four additional, deleted scenes, each introduced by the director, totaling about eight-and-a-half minutes. And there's a four-minute gag reel. That's about it, except for access to a digital copy of the film (Windows media compatible only); twenty-five scene selections; a few trailers at start-up; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
There's isn't much going on in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" that seems fresh, innovative, inspiring, uplifting, or even very romantic. It's mostly a collection of stereotypes and clichés, culminating in exactly the climax one would expect. The movie should satisfy fans of the books and maybe even satisfy some, but not all, fans of the first film. I enjoyed the first film immensely, for instance, but found this second installment rather commonplace and monotonous. On the other hand, the Wife-O-Meter thought this second film was just as sweet as the first film but dealt in slightly more adult issues.

As Truman said, "The pants stop here." Or maybe not. I could see our following these characters into their old age, with the pants slowly dissolving into tatters. We shall see.

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