IT'S MORE THAN PANTS AN AFTERNOON OF SERIOUS SHOPPING HELPED FILM'S ACTRESSES GET THE `SISTERHOOD' MESSAGE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Four of Hollywood's smartest young actresses play lifelong best friends in ``Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.''

The title of the film - which opens Wednesday - refers to a magical pair of blue jeans that fits each girl perfectly despite their very different body types. The producers were lucky to get Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Blake Lively and Amber Tamblyn to even read the script, let alone get past that gimmick.

``That script just sat on my desk for months,'' admits Ferrara, star of the acclaimed independent drama ``Real Women Have Curves'' and an international relations major at USC. ``My agent was like, 'Have you read it? Have you read it?' I'm like, 'I'll get to it,' and I finally did, begrudgingly so.

``But halfway through, I thought, 'Wow, this is great. I wasn't expecting this story of teenagers to have such complexity, because what we're so used to seeing these days are such stereotyped, very petty problems. The movies reduce the teenage experience to something very materialistic and superficial. It becomes disheartening because we know that the experience of growing up is so much more complex than what's portrayed on screen most of the time. So it was a very refreshing script.''

``What was really special when I first read it was how it didn't stereotype women, which I think is a rarity for films about young women,'' adds ``Joan of Arcadia'' headliner Tamblyn. ``Even though there were issues going on outside of the group, the girls' strength was still in the core of their bond, their friendship.''

Based on Ann Brashares' best-selling novel, the film indeed covers such subjects as ethnic identity, forbidden love, forbidden lust, communication barriers with parents, outgrowing adolescent nihilism and coping with death. And all without a single prom or catfight over some boy or anyone turning into a princess.

The pants thing, though? As three of the four friends head off to different parts of the world during their 16th summer, they agree to ship the jeans back and forth to one another, along with letters describing their experiences.

``The story has a clothing hook in the title because that's important in a market that's saturated with material for teenage girls,'' notes Bledel, who plays daughter Rory on the highly literate TV series ``Gilmore Girls.'' ``To throw this delicately told story about families and friendship and emotions and things that do matter out there without any kind of hook, it might get lost, and nobody would be interested. So it had to have an element of that, but when you go see it, I think you'll be surprised that so much is there.''

Brashares, who says more than 3.2 million copies of ``Sisterhood'' and its two sequels are in print, knows that her huge readership won't be all that surprised, except for maybe a few minor changes that have been made in some of the characters' stories.

``The spirit of the movie is a wonderful expression of the spirit of the book,'' the author declares. ``One of the things that made me happy about it was that I feel like the movie is very emotional and very raw. It doesn't sort of tie everything up and over-package it and over-process it. It's raw, and I hope it's evocative, and in that way it's very much what I'm trying to do as a writer. Though there are differences, and I think for good reasons, the essence of it is very much in the movie. It's a successful adaptation in that sense.''

Director Ken Kwapis saw ``Sisterhood'' as kind of a distaff version of one of the favorite films from his youth, George Lucas' ``American Graffiti.'' Like that one, this was about four teenage friends who learn a lot about life separately and whose relationships with one another evolve when they get back together.

``It seems like, on one hand, there are films about teenage girls that are incredibly edgy, wonderful films like 'thirteen,' '' says Kwapis, best-known for his TV work on ``The Larry Sanders Show,'' ``Malcolm in the Middle'' and ``The Office.'' ``And at the other extreme end of the spectrum are fantasies for girls. We were all aware that we were making something that will, hopefully, be a refreshing antidote to that. There seems to be this enormous place in between, where a film like this - that can be really honest and yet still be accessible - should live.''

To achieve the plausibility he wanted in the friends' relationships, Kwapis hit on a thematically apt test for the actresses.

``Most of the rehearsal process was devoted to creating opportunities for them to bond and become friends,'' the director says. ``I came up with this odd acting exercise where I took them to a vintage clothing store and gave them two hours and $75 apiece to buy something in character. The purpose of the exercise was not about buying something but about forming a group and the group dynamic.

``Afterward, I asked them a series of questions. Who picked their item first? Who took the longest? Who was the most indecisive? Who was bossing who? Who was jealous of whose body? Did the power shift within the group? Did someone try to persuade someone else? It was really interesting. In a very natural way, they found things that made their friendship feel lived-in.''

For the quartet's only actual teenager, Burbank High School senior Lively, becoming fast friends with her adult co-stars made her first acting job a terrifically enjoyable experience.

``We were crazy,'' says class president Lively, who up to now has eschewed the family business (her father Ernie plays her dad in the movie, her mom is a talent manager, and her four siblings all act) for school-related pursuits. ``It was actually difficult to work with us because we were in our own world and just talked all the time.'' As with her more experienced co-stars, though, even considering a project with this name was a major hurdle.

``When you see the title 'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,' you go, 'What the heck does that mean?' '' Lively says. ``You think gumdrops and shopping sprees and, like, dancing pants. That's what I thought, and I was like, 'There's no way I'm reading this stupid script,' even though I'd never done anything. I don't know what I was thinking; it was a good excuse for me not to cram script-reading in between cheer and choir practice.

``But this movie is not like that at all. As a teenager, I can't remember the last time I saw a teen movie that didn't make young girls seem like these horrible, mean, back-stabbing, manipulative people. It's real people, real issues that are timeless - and not just things girls deal with. That's what's so great about this movie, and there hasn't been anything like it in a while for this age group.''

Ferrara sums up the general feeling about the determinedly serious movie with the frivolous central concept.

``You don't get to understand this until you see the movie, but it's not a story about pants at all,'' she explains. ``The pants kind of disappear. At the end, we say with or without the pants, this would have happened to us anyway.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE ACTRESSES

ALEXIS BLEDEL

An indie film she doesn't want to jinx by announcing before going back to shoot the sixth season of ``Gilmore Girls'' (the last indie she made, ``Orphan King,'' has been sitting on the shelf for years). As for what will happen to Rory on the ``Girls' '' next season: ``I wish I could tell you. The producers won't tell me a thing, which is so aggravating.''

AMERICA FERRERA

Has a small role in ``Lords of Dogtown,'' opening Friday. Stars in upcoming independent drama ``How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer.'' ``It's a really great story about three generations of women in scorching-hot Arizona learning how to own their sexuality at different ages.''

BLAKE LIVELY

Graduating high school. Then figuring out whether to pursue her dream of attending Stanford or settle for being a movie star. ``The night I come back from a two-week promotional tour, I have my school choir shows. Then the premiere, then baccalaureate, finals, grad night and graduation.''

AMBER TAMBLYN

Now that her TV show, ``Joan of Arcadia,'' has just been canceled, maybe one or more of the three films she's been considering making. One thing's for sure, though: ``I'm doing a book tour in August. I do slam poetry and spoken word. I've been working on this book, 'Free Stallion,' for, like, a year, and have put a one-woman show together about it. It's pretty cool.''

- B.S.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Clockwise from left: Blake Lively, America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel and Amber Tamblyn

(2) no caption (scene from: ``Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants'')

(3) Carmen (America Ferrera, left), Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), Lena (Alexis Bledel) and Bridget (Blake Lively) portray best friends in ``Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.''

Box:

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE ACTRESSES (see text)