Four lifelong friends face the prospect of their first summer apart. Lena is going to visit her grandparents in Greece, Bridget is off to football camp in Mexico, Carmen is going to stay with her father while Tibby is left at home, working in a supermarket and trying to finish her documentary. The only thing that unites them is a pair of jeans that magically fit all of them despite their varying shapes and sizes. Each has to keep them for a week, then send them on to the next girl, sharing their tales of what happened while they were wearing them.

The screenplay by Delia Ephron and Elizabeth Chandler is based on a novel by Ann Brashares. So I suppose she's the one we should blame for the trite characterisation, insipid plotting and cloying sentiment. The characters are all basic teen movie archetypes; the shy one, the boisterous sporty one, the chubby one and the intentionally weird one. But of course each of the characters is phenomenally talented in her own field. Lena is an artist, Bridget and athlete, Carmen a writer (though we see little evidence of this) and Tibby is a filmmaker. The script takes the problems of its teenage protagonists very seriously, but to the detriment of other characters; all adults are portrayed as oblivious individuals that damage the girls by failing to communicate with them. No matter that the girls are ego-centric harridans who never think to tell grown-ups what they're feeling anyway. Of the four, only one of the adolescents develops any realisation that other people have it worse than they do and that's through a hackneyed plot device in the form of a saintly terminally ill child. Still I suppose it's hardly surprising they turn out that way as the flashback to their mutual childhood shows them as a bunch of buck-toothed brats that pick fights and have self-absorbed night-long phone heart-to-hearts. One of the many voice-overs points out that the quartet has nothing in common with each other, which doesn't explain how or why they have remained such fast friends, especially as they consistently ignore each other's advice and comments. The film perpetuates a number of filmic myths; portraying all Mediterraneans as passionate hysterics with a penchant for family feuds, suggesting that any American woman abroad will hook up with some hot guy and that childhood companions will be friends forever. It's so clichéd it's enough to make you vomit. And of course it pushes the skewed American ethic - if you whine and complain enough, you'll always get what you want. The travelling pants themselves exist solely as a clumsy Gilbert and Sullivan style plot driver so the writers can stitch together several otherwise disparate stories. The dialogue is simplistic and peppered with poorly thought-out homilies that attempt to bring out a deeper meaning in an otherwise insignificant addition to the teen chick flick genre ("Pants equal love; love your sisters and yourself…")

The character of Carmen doesn't leave promising actress America Ferrara much to chew on. The only thing that seems to define her is her neurosis over the size of her bottom. It doesn't matter that the girl has a perfectly comfortable middle-class life, people who love her and loyal friends. No, her dad doesn't love her because she's carrying some puppy fat. Ferrara tries to breathe some life into the role but can't overcome the script that is determined to make her an angry Latina stereotype. Similarly Amber Tamblyn has no chance against the screenplay that has the oddly named Tibby changing from spiky punk princess to doe-eyed surrogate sister. She has the most potentially challenging scenes, but overplays her hand using the trembling lip and eyes brimming with tears as a first rather than last resort.