The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a true charmer, a coming-of-age dramedy that treats adolescent girls with respect as it capitalizes on the power of friendship, individualism and life's possibilities.

There are some heavy-handed moments of affirmation in the film, but there is a likeable warmth to it, some strong performances and some grit and spark, particularly in the strand involving Ferrara.

It’s all mostly warm and fuzzy until the film descends into multiple, tearjerking moments and trite resolutions. The performances are fine but after Mean Girls you may find this too sticky and sweet.

My inner 14-year-old girl came out snuffling and elated.

Director Ken Kwapis glosses up the stories unnecessarily and the final reel is feelgood cliché all the way. All credit to the girls.

Each of them undergoes her own emotional catharsis, sympathy for which will depend on your tolerance for self-absorbed teen maundering and group hugs.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants thinks before it speaks and therefore is endearing and entertaining in a way that's empathetic without being sentimental.

The film achieves maximum amounts of emotional wallop without too much obvious sentimentality.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is much better than that other movie about sisterhood (with Sandra Bullock), but less zingy than the exhaling women's movie or the Southern steel magnolias' comedy.

The emotional candy that sustains this “Sisterhood” is too artificially sweetened to be filling, unless you really believe that one sentimental size fits all.