Blake Lively, left, stars as Bridget and Blythe Danner as Greta in the drama The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

Warner Bros.

People who fell in love with the four teenage girls who overcame everyday crises in the 2005 hit The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants will be heartened to know that although the gals are now between their freshman and sophomore years at college, this sequel is every bit as solid and delightful as the original.

All to the good is that all four stars of the first film are back in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Alexis Bledel again is Lena, who lost her heart on a visit to a Greek island and is now studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. America Ferrera is Carmen, who has gotten over her resentment of her mother’s remarriage and is at Yale studying drama. Blake Lively is Bridget, the athletic one who is at Brown, spending her summer at an archeological dig in Turkey, but returning home to uncover fresh details from her estranged grandmother about her mother’s suicide. Amber Tamblyn, the free-spirited Tibby who has no luck at romance, is at New York University and hopes to be a writer.

Although they’re in various parts of the world — Lena returns to Greece and discovers unsettling news about the man she fell in love with; Carmen is off to a summer theater stint in New England; Bridget is flitting from Turkey to Alabama; Tibby is in New York trying to hold together a romance that seems doomed — Elizabeth Chandler’s script brings them together at crucial moments. Although the plot is episodic, director Sanaa Hamri, whose background is in TV and music videos, including some for Mariah Carey, keeps the action flowing and each segment interesting as each girl faces some new crisis. If these little subplots had been told separately they would not have been as interesting as they are when they’re dancing around each other.

That star-crossed pair of jeans, which magically fits each young woman perfectly despite their very different body types, is back, too. Sort of a good luck charm, it’s passed from girl to girl for a week at a time during the summer they spend apart. Yet it has less to do with each of them and the plot than it did in the first film, until the very end. Just as well. At the ages of 20, those pants seem like a plot device that’s a little precious, even to the girls themselves who sometimes greet its arrival in the mail with offhanded indifference.

But there’s no indifference for their adventures, which are based on the kinds of everyday problems to which many people will be able to relate.

Carmen, content to work behind the scenes at the Yale School of Drama to support her friend, Julia (Rachel Nichols), who is the star in residence, will suddenly find herself thrust center stage behind the footlights when a young actor persuades the director of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale that she has what it takes. Julia, despite being passed over, seems to support the decision. Or does she? Is she as dedicated a friend as she seems?

Tibby, played flawlessly by Tamblyn with an odd mixture of confident smarts and nervous naiveté, finds herself in a romantic tailspin that requires emergency measures and tough-love advice from her friends. Her brave face belies the fears and uncertainty that are in Tibby’s heart.

Bridget is tossed for a loop when she discovers that her father (played by Lively’s real-life father, Ernie) has for years hidden the letters from her Grandma Greta (Blythe Danner, who will be at the Columbus Theatre on Saturday to present her most recent film, Side By Each, at the Rhode Island International Film Festival). When Bridget goes to Alabama and has a face-to-face with Greta, their scenes together play for all the frank honesty and heartbreak the script has to offer. It’s very emotional.

Lena, whose dreams have been shattered by an unsettling discovery upon her return to Greece, attempts to find happiness down another path closer to home. But things change dramatically with the surprise return of someone she had written off.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 has its funny moments, but also its touching and sentimental ones while avoiding a descent into soap opera land. It’s a social drama that spins on romantic entanglements and the importance of friendship.

****The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

Starring: Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn, Jesse Williams, Michael Rady, Blythe Danner, Rachel Nichols.

Rated: PG-13, contains adult themes, sexual situations, brief profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com