Starring Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel, and Blake Lively. Rated G.

First came Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, with its older dames in floppy hats; now comes a version for the acne-and-Avril set: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which switches the silly headgear for a magical pair of jeans. The title alone will make the most sensitive man shit his not-so-magical pants in disgust. And all of it has me wondering what women, no matter what their ages, sit around with candles cooking up goofy secret clubs with complicated sets of rules? Yes, this phoney device is used to link together a whole bunch of far-flung stories.

The latest Sisterhood, for all its feel-good messages of empowerment and solid performances from its rising young stars, will have even its tween-teen target audience asking, "Do people really act that way?" Based on Ann Brashares's best- selling book, the film is about four 17-year-old friends who are going separate ways for summer vacation. They will stay in touch by sharing, via old-fashioned post, a pair of good-luck jeans that miraculously fits all of their variously proportioned asses perfectly. Shy Lena (Gilmore Girls' Alexis Bledel) finds first love with a fisher-hottie in Greece; horny Bridget (Blake Lively) tries to forget her mother's death by hitting on the coach at her Mexican soccer camp; gothy, glib Tibby (Joan of Arcadia's Amber Tamblyn) stays home to work at a Wal-Mart look-alike and make a documentary about "losers"; and Carmen (America Ferrera) heads off to stay with her father's white-bread new Stepford-style fiancée (Nancy Travis) and her kids.

Director Ken Kwapis adeptly intercuts the girls' coming-of-age stories, but too often the stories' resolutions are sickeningly uplifting. The best of the bunch is Carmen's journey: her confident, amply curvaceous Latina is a welcome change from the blond stick insects that populate most teen movies, and Ferrera makes believable her cultural clash with a dad who seems bent on erasing his Hispanic past. But Lena's squeaky-clean romance with her Greek boyfriend will seem cornball to even the most sheltered kid, and Thora Birch-wannabe Tibby's friendship with her precocious 12-year-old film assistant moves from mildly amusing to laughably maudlin.

In real life, as any angst-ridden adolescent will tell you, problems don't wrap up neatly, friends don't stand by you valiantly, and snail mail doesn't travel quickly. There's a dearth of films about females in this age group, and Sisterhood deserves credit for creating characters with more complexity than both the Olsen twins combined. Still, this Delia Ephron and Elizabeth Chandler script could have been so much more smart and less manipulative.

For the sisterhood of fans behind the chick-lit hit, the only thing that will matter is that the movie stays emotionally true to the book-and it does. That leaves only one important question remaining: where can the rest of us get a pair of these pants?