NEVER judge a book by its cover, or a film by its unwieldy title.

The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants sounds alarmingly like a chick flick about mobile lingerie saleswomen.

Although Ken Kwapis' enjoyable feature is indeed a chick flick (targeted at teenage girls), the pants in question are denim, because for our transatlantic cousins, pants are trousers.

They also misplace the second 'l' in travelling in the film's title, but after the underwear mistranslation, what's a missing consonant between friends?

The heroines of Kwapis' picture, based on the book by Ann Brashares, are four teenage girls, each of whom must embark on a quest to truly understand who she is.

Carmen (America Ferrera), Bridget (Blake Lively), Lena (Alexis Bledel) and Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) have been best friends since they were babies and their mothers met in a prenatal aerobics class.

Now, with summer approaching, the teenagers are poised to go their separate ways.

Bridget is heading to soccer camp in Mexico while Carmen intends to spend some quality time with her wayward father Al (Bradley Whitford).

Lena is planning a trip to her grandparents' home in Greece, while Tibby begrudgingly stays at home, stacking shelves to pay for a documentary she is making about losers in her neighbourhood.

The day before they depart, the four girls find a pair of jeans which, magically, fits them all perfectly, despite their wildly different body shapes.

And so they hit upon the novel idea of sending the trousers to one another throughout the summer, along with reports of their holiday escapades.

The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants has the potential to descend into a morass of cloying sentiment and cliched adolescent angst.

However, the quality of Delia Ephron and Elizabeth Chandler's screenplay, and the performances, is such that the heartache and heartbreak feel genuine.

The four girls speak to one another in language that rings true: sometimes stilted, sometimes clumsy, often clouded with uncertainty - but true.

They ply a nice line in cynicism too, like Tibby's off-the-cuff remark: "Parents screw up... it's what they're good at."

Bledel, Tamblyn and Lively capture the swirling vortex of emotions which consume their young women but Ferrera is simply mesmerising as the body-conscious daughter from a broken home struggling to conceal her rage towards her father.

When the emotional dam finally bursts, during a heart-breaking telephone conversation, the pain is piercing.

The dramatic conceit of the travelling pants is unnecessary - the film would hold together just as well if the girls didn't spend their pocket money sending the jeans from one person to the next.

We'd also be spared the mail room montages which bookmark each episode.

Director Kwapis ensures that the trials and tribulations fit snugly into just under two hours.

Damon Smith

See it at UCI

www sisterhoodofthetravelingpants.warnerbros.com