Movie Review: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on Saturday, while huddled under a blanket.

I am a bit torn on the overall review, so perhaps I will list its pros and cons.

Pros:

• Dealt with real-world problems (illness, divorce, sex, anger) without presenting simplistic, watered-down solutions, which is very rare for a teen movie.
• Dealt with the kind of friendships I remember from high school: deep, abiding, accepting — in contrast to many movies where girls are pitted as competition, which is far removed from my own sphere of experience.
• Was not about boys or hating parents.
• Did a really good job of “showing, not telling”.
• Good acting by most of the cast. (One girl was from Real Women Have Curves, another starred in Joan of Arcadia, and another was in Sin City and starred in The Gilmore Girls. The fourth seems to be a newcomer, but held her own.)

Cons:

• After doing a good job of “showing”, the movie insisted on explicitly “telling” as well, sometimes to an excruciating degree. [See below for housemates’ input after I told them how I felt about this over-explanation.]
• Like many movies before it, it seems to believe all “ethnic” people have more fun [read: dance a lot]. Sigh. Don’t ask me; ask Dirty Dancing.
• The premise of the pants was… weird.

I think overall that it had a lot more pros than cons. I think a big problem for me is that whenever I watch a movie like this, I am secretly (or not so secretly) looking for the female Stand By Me — a movie that will last through the decades as a story of childhood bonds — but they never quite hit it. I did enjoy watching it a lot. I don’t know if it was the sickness, but I cried like three times throughout the movie. Some scenes were genuinely wrenching and the acting was entirely transparent.

I’ll give it a 3.75 out of 5.

It’s like the Bladerunner movie.
— Seppo

So it needs the Bladerunner treatment?
— Colin

Day Five of Utter Hell

Day One: Friday. I felt a cough coming on. Figured, oh well, better take come cough medicine.

Day Two: Saturday. I woke up in intense pain all over my body. I was coughing more and had an alternately stuffy/runny nose and some chest congestion, but I could withstand those symptoms. But the back pain was blinding. I took some cold medicine with painkillers.

Day Three: Sunday. I felt like I couldn’t move. I felt incredibly weak all over. Bright lights hurt my eyes. I was so cold and unable to get warm, even in bed with the electric blanket cranked all the way up. I took the hottest bath I had even taken in my life because my skin was so cold. I got out of the tub and almost passed out. Instead, I just lay on the floor for a while with the towel around me, wondering if I could yell loudly enough to get Seppo’s attention. After several minutes of whimpering on the floor, I realized that I was getting colder again and somehow got myself dressed and back into bed. My head spun and I felt so weak. I felt like I understood for the first time how harsh the flu can be on old people and on children. I was alternating between being too cold and breaking out into a sweat all day.

Day Four: Monday. Luckily, I had Monday off, so I didn’t have to worry about missing work. I woke up on Monday feeling tons better. I felt my body kicking back in its ability to generate some body heat on its own sometime during the night. I woke up and I was able to get out of bed and answer the phone. I was able to make breakfast for Seppo and me. (Seppo and I had been alternating who was taking care of whom based on who felt crappier at the time; he had almost fully recovered by Friday, but had a relapse.) I even went outside to pick some mint for honey-mint tea. I felt like I was gonne be 100% by Tuesday. The worst symptom I had was sinus pressure and pain from congested nasal passages, but some other cold medicine took care of that.

Day Five: Tuesday. I woke up and it was like Saturday all over again. Arg. Maybe yesterday was like Seppo’s false recovery on Friday.

And of course, there are things I really must get done for work, so I am working from home today. I just hope I can focus enough.