Says the Washington Post,

If Chelsea Clinton is getting married on Martha's Vineyard in the next 10 days — and some chatty islanders plus the National Enquirer insist that she is — it should help to have a former commander in chief, a current secretary of state and a brigade of Secret Service agents acting as her co-conspirators. Though they've never confirmed an engagement, rumor has it that Bill and Hillary Clinton's 29-year-old daughter will wed longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky at the estate of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, or some other family friend's estate, either this weekend or next. Or not.

The antics necessary to keep such an arrangement shrouded in the requisite secrecy - think a lot of document-shredding, aliases, and security companies. As the piece says, "Paper invitations are the ultimate liability." Your only chance is the top-secret getaway, the "decoy" trip, the "haha it's not a barbecue it's actually a wedding!" Because if these wedding planners are pros, the paparazzi are more than their match. "They'll go to bizarre, great lengths," says planner Mindy Weiss.

Upon reading this, I immediately thought: Hello Rom-Com! It's like The Wedding Planner meets Notting Hill meets some combination of 27 Dresses and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Picture it: a control-freak wedding planner famed for her discretion ("they tell me you're the best," people will tell her repeatedly) is planning the nuptials of Brangelina-level celebrities. Meanwhile, charming reprobate paparrazo has to get the shots or get fired/not get a promotion. Obviously, he must infiltrate. But she's wise to him, and a series of tricks and false leads and red herrings ensues as they match wits and the sexual tension grows. Can they trust each other?
Can she relinquish control? Can he trust his emotions? Obviously the celeb couple engages in many comic-relief shenanigans, too. There may be a gay colleague thrown in, because. Haven't yet decided whether she has a stuffed-shirt boss or if she's too uptight and asexual to attract anyone until paparazzo loosens her up. The only thing I haven't figured out it...will true love prevail?

Keep Celeb Vows Veiled In Secrecy? It's No Snap [Washington Post]

Writes S.T. VanAirsdale,

They're the only kinds of movies it seems Hollywood isn't trying to improve...Click flicks do reliably well, too, but that's exactly their problem: they're too reliable, and they're always just chick flicks. When the system exploits the same perky stars with the same aspirational longing, sexual hang-ups, and heroic white knights in 100 minutes or less, the boilerplate doesn't incentivize anyone to watch. Hollywood will never get guys to follow the trailers for Couples Retreat as rabidly as they did for Terminator Salvation, but if a "rom-com" is good enough and smart enough, damnit, people will like it...but Hollywood doesn't have enough faith in women to offer them an opportunity to confront the question themselves.

Well, I can't pretend the trailer for Couples' Retreat inspired anything but nausea in this woman, or that I've ever been able to stomach that particular spelling of "damnit," but patronizing and laddish though the tone might be, the sad truth is that he's partially right: studios won't make rom-coms better as long as they think women will settle for mindless claptrap. And he's probably also right: if men started watching smart ones, we'd see less Ugly Truth.

Except, wait, he really likes The Ugly Truth. Because at least it's "way more honest in its treatment of relationships" than Funny People. (And Julie and Julia is "boring," albeit full of "girl power.") And herein, I guess, lies the central conflict: we may have very different ideas of what would constitute an improvement - and for that matter, demonstrate much "faith in women." Basically, he doesn't want chick flicks to be better, he wants them to be dick flicks - which are, by the way, equally formulaic. The difference is, when the formula's romance, it's inherently dull to him - "with its bright, compact idylls of open hearts, romantic love, and happy-ever-after" - not worth his time.

And the thing is, chick flicks can be good. Dirty Dancing, Some Kind of Wonderful, When Harry Met Sally, these are good movies that hew to the formula VanAirsdale may deplore, but feature characters and writing, and are better able to touch a lot of people than the most meticulously plotted, suspenseful drama. The difference is, they're honest. The Ugly Truth is lazy. Movies don't need, inherently, to reinvent the wheel: ask Jane Austen. Ask anyone who's ever read anything, for that matter. We may see a crappy movie for an easy entertainment fix, but we probably won't see it again. Make smart chick flicks and we'll justify the faith in us - and in the genre. And I'm guessing we won't even need to bring the guys.

Why It's Okay to Watch Chick Flicks [Esquire]

According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, author of the study on romance carried out at the University of Hertfordshire, women do not want expensive presents. "Contrary to what many men believe, you do not have to spend large sums of money to woo a woman – it really is the thought that counts," he said. Wiseman, who, by the way, has an amusingly bizarre personal blog, conducted a survey of 6,500 men and women from various countries. He asked men and women what they thought was romantic, and found that among the Brits, there was a large discrepancy between what the ladies want and what men think they want.

Wiseman generated a list of the best ways to woo a woman, which beings with "cover her eyes and lead her to a lovely surprise," and ends with "make her a compilation of her favorite music" (yes, the other eight are also moves pulled straight from your average chick flick). However, British men seem woefully ignorant about the ten magic gestures that women really want: they are, apparently, up to 10% less likely to make romantic gestures than men from other countries, and when they do, it is often the wrong one.

He found that "only 32 per cent of British men had written a song or poem about their partner, compared to 41 per cent of non-British men." Only 32%? That's still a lot of terrible poetry. He also said that only 44% had taken their partners on a surprise vacation, compared to 51% of men overseas. Wiseman concluded that there is a disparity between how men and women rank romance, with men tending to ignore the "psychological impact of small romantic gestures."

This means that men should stop buying expensive lingerie and start drawing women a lot more baths. "Women like them because they show men are into them and thinking of them rather than themselves," he says.

British Men 'Among Least Romantic' [Telegraph]
What Women Want: Top Ten Romantic Gestures [Telegraph]

The thing is, while most of the female-driven movies are "small," their competition are the huge, big-budget blockbusters. My Sister's Keeper hits theaters right at the same time as the Transformers sequel. Julie & Julia will be released the same day as GI Joe. Will this counter-programming mean decent box office numbers for the movies with female leads? And why are the divisions between fare for men and offerings for women so pronounced? If you looked at the film releases for gender clues, you'd think that guys only like stuff that blows up and women only want to cry or watch people fall in love. As a woman, I have nothing against a tear-jerker or a rom com, but I'm also interested in thrillers, adventures, spy intrigue and general comedy. I love movies, but My Sister's Keeper and The Proposal don't exactly feel like they're tailored for me, and I'm not dying to see either of them.

But one of the most interesting things about The Proposal is that it was written by a man, pretending to be a woman. Peter Chiarelli penned the script, but put the name "Jennifer Kirby" on it when shopping it around. He tells MovieLine:

It was all about deception and lies, as opposed to wanting people to think a woman had written it. It was about not wanting them to think that I had written it, not anything socially relevant.

Except it is relevant, because it proves that guys don't only think about blowing shit up.

A 'Proposal' They Won't Refuse? [LA Times]
How The Proposal Writer Peter Chiarelli Duped Hollywood Into Thinking He Was A Woman [MovieLine]
Earlier: Coming Soon: 2008, The Summer Of The Dick Flick

"The entertainment industry allows you, the audience member, to pat yourself on the back and say: 'I'm smarter than her, I'm more together than her, and I'm not as stupidly anorexic as her.'" The Times' Kevin Maher notes that ten years ago, we had spunky heroines like Bridget Jones (and in music, the Spice Girls). But now?

The recent Anne Hathaway/Kate Hudson catfight Bride Wars or the forthcoming Confessions of a Shopaholic are aimed exclusively at women, and yet feature female characters who are variously neurotic, idiotic, label-obsessed, weight-obsessed, man-obsessed or weddingobsessed, and often all at the same time.

And! He doesn't hold back:

Increasingly, the modern Hollywood women's picture or so-called chick flick has become home to the worst kind of regressive pre-feminist stereotype and misogynistic cliché.

Maher has an explanation for the state of chick flicks, and here's another blockquote, because he is just so good at breaking it down:

The chick-flick heroine that emerged then was often ditzy, yes, but she also had recourse to irony, self-satire and intelligence. When Bridget the movie appeared in 2001 and eventually scooped more than £150 million at the international box office, the chick flick became a hot Tinseltown property. However, for every smart-thinking Bridget Jones, Legally Blonde or Devil Wears Prada there appeared a slew of movies that appealed to the genre's baser instincts.Films such as 27 Dresses, Made of Honour, License to Wed and What Happens in Vegas were cookie-cutter movies defined by lazy stereotypes (wedding overkill, anyone?) and explicit anti-feminism.

Melissa Silverstein of Women & Hollywood counters: "Women go to these movies, because they want to go to the movies. And most of the time there are no other options out there." But Maher has good news: The glut of "chick flicks" — that is, dumb, cheap-shot movies aggressively targeted to women with the sole purpose of taking their money — may die down. Once the market gets flooded, the appetite wanes, and actual quality films — with women in them — like Michelle Williams' upcoming road movie, Wendy and Lucy, can shine.

Is It Time To Kill The Chick Flick? [Times Of London]

There's not much here for men, or, for that matter, women who understand that the complexity of human relationships doesn't reduce to catchphrases… All of this results in way too much relationship chatter and not nearly enough comedy, romance or even dysfunctional relationships. We want to laugh — but at what?… The film seems more like a two-hour pitch for a TV series than a coherent movie. Resolutions of all the stories feel forced, as if someone finally looked at the clock.

Here's my message to everyone who says "eh, I'm going to see it anyway." Every ticket you buy is a ballot, and you are voting for the kinds of movies you want to see more of. Hollywood is not a democracy, but it does follow a money trail. When you go see shitty chick flicks, you are giving Hollywood the green light to make more shitty chick flicks. Making movies is a business. If no one went to see crappy movies targeted to women, that would be bad business. But since people — women — flock to poorly made, cliché-filled chick flicks, they continue to flood the market. We have stuff like New In Town and Bride Wars. Plus, there will be a Sex And The City sequel, just like there will be a sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The films made money.

He's Just Not That Into You is based on a self-help book, and its success (or failure) may affect the fate of another book being turned into a film: French Women Don't Get Fat. Just what we need to follow up a flick about desperate, clueless women: diet advice! HJNTITY seems to revel in its mockery of the female psyche and clichéd quirky/sassy/sardonic best friends of color; is paying $12 to support the concept, the book, the film and its stars really worth it?

Not Much To Get "Into" In Ensemble Romantic Comedy [Reuters/Hollywood Reporter]

Earlier: Cliché-Laden Chick Flick Tries To Convince You It's Not Full Of Clichés
Shoes, Self-Help & Catfights: What Women Want In Movies
Must Female Movie & TV Characters Always Have Men On The Mind?
Where The Hell Are The Strong Women?
Women In Hollywood Speak Out On Women In Hollywood
Does The Female "Buddy" Movie Exist?
Dude Says "We Don't Need More Female Superheroes," I Say Bullshit
Coming Soon: 2008, The Summer Of The Dick Flick

Writes LaToya Peterson from Racialicious:

We’re [black people] always the punchline, never the bride. (Or the girl who goes on a date. Or anything but the sassy friend who shows up to give the real characters a dose of real-world truisms before disappearing back into the shadows of the script.)

Of course, watching the online trailer (in which the two black women mysteriously do not appear), Drew Barrymore does have two "sassy" friends of color: An Asian guy and a Latin guy, who school her about MySpace. We've written about the trend of the black best friend before; a "consolation prize" for actors of color in TV shows and movies for decades. (And in this all-star cast, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Connelly appear alongside women like Tokyo Girl #2 and African Woman #3.)

Plus, in an attempt to convince guys that this movie is not your typical chick flick, Justin Long, Kevin Connolly and Bradley Cooper made a marketing video in which they count 10 "chick flick clichés" that are not in HJNTIY. The video, unlike the trailer for the film, is actually pretty funny…

…At first. But then you realize that, well, shit. The reason these guys can mock chick flick clichés is because Hollywood keeps churning out clichéd chick flicks. What's more, the assumption is that women want to see a film in which a a guy gets a makeover, where a woman slides down a wall crying, or where there's a quirky/sassy/sardonic best friend. (And this movie does seem to have those, actually.)

But as we've mentioned before, what is ultimately the worst part about this movie (based on a book, based on a line from a TV show) is this: It makes women look like losers. Like pathetic, desperate idiots who are hopeless when it comes to relationships and can't seem to understand why sitting by the phone waiting for him to call is a bad idea. Judging from the trailer, none of the guys are assholes; all of the women are emotional imbeciles. But it's a comedy, because annihilation and mockery of the female psyche is hilarious, right?

Spotting the Stereotypes: He’s Just Not That Into You [Racialicious]
ICYMI - 10 Chick Flick Cliches That Are Not In "He's Just Not That Into You" [via Best Week Ever]
He's Just Not That Into You [Trailer]
Earlier: There's No Way You'll Be Into He's Just Not That Into You
Black Women: Wise Best Friends To White Women Everywhere

The cinematic events which apparently heralded this sea change were Sex and the City: the Movie, Twilight, and Mamma Mia. In other words, women had promiscuous sex, had sex in the city, and didn't have sex with vampires, and amidst financial turmoil and political change, we ate it up.

However, all this is positively Bergman-esque compared to 2009's distaff-themed offerings. Says the FT,

This year women will be targeted even more precisely. One sub-sub-genre to emerge is feature films adapted from self-help books, notably French Women Don't Get Fat, which instructs women they can stay slim while still scoffing the air in the éclair choux pastry, and He's Just Not that Into You , which proffers advice such as that if a man runs away from a woman he is not in love with her.

The article quotes one feminist's dismayed response to this trend: "Self-help books send out the message women need to improve themselves instead of being happy with who they are." Well, that seems a tad unfair. For one thing, as self-help books go, these two are fairly common-sensical: both were remarkably short of psychco-babble and long on clearing up misconceptions, albeit obvious ones. There's a reason these books were such runaway bestsellers that they caught Hollywood's roving eye, and it's more than just numbers. Self-help offends people by its lack of artifice, its vulgarity, but chick lit and women's fiction hews to a similar formula of control-wresting and triumph. After all, a film like Sex and the City or Mamma Mia is no more virtuous for wrapping its self-help cliche's in shoes and ABBA; the self-help films will simply make no bones about it. The irony is, the end result will probably not be too different from what Hollywood's already turning out.

However, it will be interesting to note whether the stigmas of self-help carry over to its cinemazation. After all, a woman who can justify seeing Sex and the City for a laugh or Twilight in the name of cultural anthropology - no small class of women, I'd wager - might have a harder time pulling the trigger for French Women Don't Get Fat in widescreen. We like to be silly, not to feel stupid. Whether or not one finds the self-help film trend dismaying in itself, one can't deny that the "woman/smart " divide is being made nakedly stark. In removing all the artifice from what have essentially been self-help movies all along, Hollywood's ironically respecting our intelligence. And I wonder if that might not, also ironically, result in a backlash of denial - not the kind of escapism anyone wants.

Year of Women [FT]

It's like a perfect storm of Cosmo approved clichés, so it's sort of not surprising that in the past year or so, Kate Hudson has appeared on the cover of pretty much every women's magazine under the sun, including W, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and of course, Cosmo. But it's not like Bride Wars is Hudson's first dip into the tasteless end of the cinematic pool.

On his blog Hollywood Elsewhere, movie critic Jeffery Wells says plainly, Kate Hudson has no taste. Though we all loved her as charming, winsome Penny Lane in Almost Famous, Wells asks, "Is there another actress out there whose name on a movie poster is a more reliable assurance you're going to have a dispiriting or lousy time in a theatre (or in your living room)?" Most recently it's been this terrible looking Bride Wars and the Dane Cook-co-staring fiasco My Best Friend's Girl, but in the years leading up to those dim bulbs, You, Me and Dupree,, The Skeleton Key, and How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days.

And Hathaway, despite a commanding performance in Rachel Getting Married, you're not off the hook either. Wells notes that her three most recent movies have had something to do with weddings: Rachel, Bride Wars, and according to MTV, now she's just signed on to do a film called The Fiance, about "a woman on the verge of walking down the aisle, who decides to cancel her wedding and dump her seemingly perfect fiance. She wants to figure out who she really is, and what she wants out of life. But unfortunately for her inner journey, her meddling parents attempt to patch things up between the couple, and she can’t move on."

Seriously? I know there is a dearth of good scripts out there for young actresses, but come on, Anne. I expected more from you. Kate I'm pretty sure has no talent, but you can actually act. Bride Wars comes out in January of next year, so at least we have a few months respite before the deluge of idiocy.

Saints Protect Us [Hollywood Elsewhere]
The Girl Has No Taste [Hollywood Elsewhere]
Anne Hathaway Has A New ‘Fiance’ [MTV]

The Los Angeles Times:

After this initial setup, however, "The Women" becomes unfocused as it stumbles over all the points it wants to make. Given English's writing skills, the dialogue doesn't help as much as it should, tending too much toward one-liners that aim for raunchy whenever possible.

Never particularly believable, the story quickly unravels into schematic contrivance and wish-fulfillment fantasy. The actresses all try hard to bring a project they clearly believe in to life, but that is rarely enough.

It's hard to say what's sadder, that "The Women's" intended audience had to wait 14 years for a film like this or that that long wait has been almost for naught.

Entertainment Weekly:

The Women is such an arduous patchwork of ''issues'' it ends up a Frankenstein's monster of a chick flick. The movie is a feminist lesson instead of what it should have been (and once was): a tough, synthetic, high-gloss entertainment that wears its heart on its lacquered fingernails.

Time:

But that does not address the piece's fundamental problem, namely that it is not now and never has been funny. Or even human. In the previous movie version, as in this one (and I'll bet in the play itself) all the actresses strike comedic poses. They sashay about, rolling their eyes, pouting their lips, making big gestures and talking really fast. It's essentially an antique theatrical manner, the falsity of which the movie camera, dialing in for its close-ups (and even its two shots) exposes as relentlessly now as it did 69 years ago. No one ever gets to act — and this is a cast rich in good actresses — if by acting you mean the expression of authentic emotions. They are caught up in a zip-zap frenzy of words — and it is interesting how many lines in this script can be traced back to the Boothe original, which would not have been all that difficult to improve upon.

USA Today:

It's as if English missed the point. The Women was not about the healing bonds of friendship. It was about humorous revenge. Though aspects of the 1939 comedy seem silly and shrill now, they were at least consistently entertaining. Where the original was deliciously loopy and melodramatic fun, this one is watered-down, sappy and earnest.

Salon:

The original, bitchier, less girlfriendy version of "The Women" was a product of a less empowered era. This new version is meant to reflect how far we've come, with ads encouraging us to gather our friends and see it together. Of course the filmmakers want to rally female viewers en masse, because you can be damn sure that nothing with a penis is getting anywhere near this thing.

And yet, contrary to what Hollywood or Washington or Madison Avenue may believe, women don't, in fact, possess a hive mind. We don't all like yoga and eat sticks of butter when we're depressed, and we don't all travel in packs to see crappy movies. Human nature is complicated like that. Why isn't my gender rioting in the streets over this femmey stereotyping BS? I can only hope it's because we've got our hands full fending off the widespread belief that we'll put anybody with two X chromosomes in the White House.

The New York Times:

At the heart of the hectic story is Mary’s discovery that her husband is having an affair with Crystal (Eva Mendes), a gold-digging vixen who works at the perfume counter at Saks Fifth Avenue. The strain of top-down class resentment in the way her character is portrayed — mean, selfish, cheap and vulgar — is perhaps the most shocking thing about the movie, and also, perhaps, the most honest. At bottom, this is less a movie about defending a marriage or battling for a man than it is about the protection of social privilege. Out in the suburbs, the loyal servants stand by their mistress (and seem to have no private lives or desires of their own), while in the city the lower orders scheme and gossip and connive to steal what can never be rightfully theirs.

And of course, the heroic women of “The Women” will not concede without a fight. But rarely has class struggle, or catfighting, for that matter, been so tediously waged. And rarely have so many fine actresses been enlisted in such a futile cause. They all deserved better, and it hurts especially to watch Ms. Bening and Candice Bergen (who plays Mary’s mother) lend their wit and dignity to a project that has so little of its own.

Telegraph:

When George Cukor directed his version of Claire Boothe Luce's play The Women in 1939, he stuck to its main conceit by making the entire movie a male-free zone – unless you count some sexually ambiguous lapdogs in the opening sequence. This week's remake, written and directed by Diane English, obeys the rule reverently (until its final scene), a curious choice for a film that holds womankind in such open contempt. If you don't have anything nice to say about an entire gender, why restrict your options so?

Daily Mail:

To fit in with political correctness and the taste for female bonding which made such a hit out of Sex And The City, an acerbic satire on shallow socialites has been transformed into a cosy celebration of friendship among smug, middle-class women.

This is not an improvement.

The Mirror:

The Women boasts the novelty of not featuring a single man in the entire film, save for a newborn baby boy, while most of the conversation revolves around sex, shopping and plastic surgery which are, apparently, the secrets of a fulfilled life.

Shallow? Definitely. Any good? Not really. And you can’t help watching the thing without thinking of Sex And The City’s dumber cousin.

Premiere:

It would be sad if Tinseltown used this poorly executed remake as proof that there's no audience for female-driven films, because that's not the case at all. The women of America really are hungry for movies made by us, about us, and for us. And we're willing to pony up at the box office to prove it. But that doesn't mean that just any shoddy, "You go girl!" script can earn our loyalty. Please Hollywood: write truthfully for us, and from the heart. It's what Carrie Bradshaw would do.

Related: The Women— Witty Moments (1939) [YouTube]

'The Women' opens today, nationwide.

Target Women: Chick Flicks [Current]
Sarah Haskins On Chick Flicks [Salon]

Village Voice:

Resist if you dare, and for as long as you must, but even the hoariest haters eventually succumbed to the girly, cottony charms of 2005's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, if in the privacy of their Netflix queues. I foresee a similar fate for its blandly engaging sequel: moms, daughters, and faux-ironic twentysomethings filling the theaters, the rest of us filling our jammies and DVD players in six months.

Fox News:

Stuff happens, feelings are hurt, boys dramatically enter and leave their lives and major problems wrap up a bit too neatly, especially at the picturesque ending. That "Traveling Pants 2" offers material that's tailored to an underserved audience _ girls and women who like films that allow them to think and feel _ is, of course, a solid start. You just wish it were a more comfortable fit.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Much has transpired in the lives of best friends forever Tibby, Carmen, Bridget and Lena and their shared globe-trotting jeans in the three years since the first "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants."

But it's nothing compared to castmate America Ferrera's career in the interim, as the Emmy-winning breakout star of ABC's "Ugly Betty."

She remains very much the team player in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2," a shapely sequel that retains much of the sparkle and warmth that made the original such a pleasant surprise.

USA Today:

With the quartet of girls now in their first year of college, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (* * 1/2 out of four) is more of a coming-of-age story than its 2005 predecessor, tackling more mature subjects. However, for all its moments of believable dialogue and persuasive emotional truths, it also has some fairy-tale scenarios. But that's almost a textbook definition of a chick flick, so it doesn't interfere much with the film's appeal. And the performances of the four young women, particularly plucky America Ferrera and sardonic Amber Tamblyn, are likable and often charming.

Entertainment Weekly via CNN:

But three years ago, in "Sisterhood 1," half the cast were way more famous than the other. Back then, TV stars Alexis Bledel ("Gilmore Girls") and Amber Tamblyn ("Joan of Arcadia") were the well-known pair of actresses, although you'd never know it from the movie, which smoothly offered all four performers equal time to be cute, freak out about something, and literally wear the pants.

Perhaps it's no shocker, given the way Hollywood likes to turn 'em over, but now it's the other two members of the sisterhood — Blake Lively of "Gossip Girl" and America Ferrera of "Ugly Betty" — who are a lot bigger deals outside the multiplex.

Once again, much to the sequel's credit, the story doesn't seem to care. The movie keeps moving quickly (but not sloppily) among the heroines, so that if you're overloaded, say, on one sister's sugary plotline, it only comes around every fourth scene or so, and never sticks around too long. Even at 111 minutes, "Pants" mostly sprints.

Variety:

With very little sex and very little city, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" still seems a good bet to grab a sizable chunk of the underserved chick-flick demographic, boosted by its young stars' blossoming profiles (particularly "Gossip Girl's" Blake Lively) and a blithely shallow approach to story. A likable quartet of players, a surfeit of male bimbos and an appetite for quick-cooked emotion should make the Aug. 6 Warner Bros. release a bigger hit than its 2005 predecessor, which grossed $39 million domestically.

Chicago Sun-Times:

The movie intercuts quickly but not confusingly from one story to another, is dripping with seductive locations, is not shy about romantic cliches and has a lot of heart. The women are all sincere, intelligent, vulnerable, sweet, warm. That’s in contrast to “SATC,” with its narcissistic and shallow heroines. The “SATC” ladies should fill their flasks with cosmopolitans, go to see “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” and cry their hearts out with futile regret for their misspent lives.

The Los Angeles Times:

In the current popular culture, female friendships — at any age — are generally considered secondary to life's "important" relationships, the romantic bonds between men and women.

Nowhere is this depressing trend more evident than in Hollywood, where story lines putatively about women's friendships tend toward the saccharine ("Mona Lisa Smile"), the malicious ("Mean Girls") or the boy-crazy (take your pick).

Which is why it's such a pleasure (and a relief) to encounter movies such as " The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2." Like the first "Pants" movie, it presents its heroines' relationships as complicated, challenging and particularly rewarding, and not simply as a vehicle for finding the perfect boyfriend.

Premiere:

It's easy to dismiss The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 as just another typical teen film with jocky dudes and back-stabbing girls that tend to flood the teen market. There was the toothless film adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club in 1995, starring Rachael Leigh Cook, who later graduated to become the ugly-duckling social outcast rescued by Freddie Prinze Jr. in She's All That in 1995. Similarly, we saw Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone as the designer-clothes crazed Cher in 1995 and the Lindsay Lohan vehicle Mean Girls in 2004. While those films were either underestimating their audience or merely featuring makeovers and female rivalry, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 bridges the gap between them. The idealism of the books about childhood friendship smoothly tackles the mature relationship topics that are common in these other comedies with none of the angst or crassness. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, directed by Sarah Lawrence grad Sanaa Hamri, depicts refreshingly positive female friendship based in reality without cynicism.

Wednesday Is The New Friday In Movie Releases [LA Times]

Earlier: 'Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants 2' Isn't Amazing, But You Should See It Anyway

'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2' opens today, nationwide.

The director, Sanaa Hamri, also helmed Something New, and she handled the story of four smart young women dealing with romantic, familial and working relationships really well. I dig Tibby (Amber Tamblin)'s pseudo-feminist character because she's sharp, witty and vulnerable. (Plus, her boyfriend is Asian. And they don't even mention it!) Carmen (America Ferrera) is alternately fierce and insecure. Lena (Alexis Bledel) has a magnetic attraction to the hot hot model from her figure drawing class, and that's before she sees him naked. He's black, but, again, they don't even mention it. The only character with a weak plotline is Bridget (Blake Lively), but since she appears in scenes with both Blythe Danner and personal fave Shohreh Aghdashloo, she of House Of Sand And Fog, you try to forgive. Is it too long? Maybe. Does it go back and forth between the characters too much? Perhaps. But seriously: A movie directed by a woman, written by a woman, based on books written by a woman, starring young women with minorities and older women as supporting cast? Give it a chance. Or at least rent it when it comes out on DVD.

Sure, there's also an Angelina Jolie assassin film (Wanted) and Cameron Diaz stars with Ashton Kutcher in What Happens in Vegas, (which, as Dargis writes, is "a role that shrieks Brittany Murphy five years ago." But seriously. Where are the big-budget, quality films with women in them? Writes Ms. Dargis:

In 2008, when a white woman and a black man are running for president and attracting unprecedented numbers of voters partly because they are giving a face to the wildly under-represented, you might think that Hollywood would get a clue.

Earlier: Whatever Happened To The "Comedy Of Equals"?
Does The Female "Buddy" Movie Exist?
The Future Of Female Comedies May Sit Squarely On Tina Fey's Shoulders
Where The Hell Are The Strong Women?

The safely sweet:
San Francisco Chronicle, Walter Addiego:

The camaraderie among the women is enjoyable, even if their various woes, and the ways the characters deal with them, have a soap opera feeling. Labaki, who has directed music clips for Arab pop musicians, gets nice performances from her nonprofessional cast.

Much of the tension in "Caramel" turns on the problematic status of women in Lebanese society, where liberation is barely skin deep. It's more a symptom of that status than a sign of negligence that Layale refuses to wear a seat belt when she's driving her car. "It suffocates me," she tells a handsome motorcycle cop.

It all has the makings of a mild soap opera, or perhaps a Pedro Almodóvar film without camp or kinkiness. And Ms. Labaki is less interested in breaking new ground than in providing her audience the kind of comfort and catharsis that her characters give one another. Which is not to say that "Caramel" is overly soft or sweet.

Though it has superficial resemblances to Hollywood product, "Caramel" has the tact and sophistication not to tie things up too tidily for any of its women. Possibilities appear for some but not all of them, and it is not at all a sure thing that any of those possibilities will pan out. All these characters can count on, finally, is that they will be there for one another. The bonds between women, "Caramel" says, are the ones that matter, the ones that last.

Warm-hearted and accessible, it could benefit from good word of mouth in a limited art house run, particularly among audiences who like their rom-coms laced with foreign ingredients.

"Caramel" is an ode to female bonding — it's a beauty-shop movie, for God's sake! — a celebration of female sensuality and a series of interlocking love stories, and it positively revels in the conventions of those genres. It's a reassuring and delicious film, but in no sense an adventurous one.

The kvetches of regulars at a cheery Beirut beauty salon couldn't be more familiar — and that's the slender charm of Caramel, a Lebanese variation on sweetly soapy dramas about Women Who Bond With Wet Hair.

Labaki elicits believable performances from her nonprofessional cast, as she depicts a society torn between tradition and unstoppable change. But the script, which Labaki co-wrote with two men, is uneven, fluctuating between poignancy - Layale waiting in vain for her lover to show up for a hotel tryst, for example - and fluff.

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