Director: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
Genre: Comedy
Rating: B-
American Pie was a coming of age film about a group of boys in
their senior year of high school who make a pact to lose their virginity, while
its first two sequels (American Pie 2 and
American Wedding) follow the same
group as they discover what happens to you after you finally come of age. Now, thirteen years after the original film
hit screens comes the latest and fourth feature film in the series; American Reunion. This film provides the story of what happens
when you realize that adult life isn’t all it’s cracked out to be.
Since the wedding of Jim (Biggs)
and Michelle (Hannigan), each member of the group has apparently gone off into
the world, leaving East Great Falls and rarely looking back. Jim and Michelle have fallen into a rut in
their marriage, Kevin (Nicholas) is happily married and a bit of a housewife,
Oz (Klein) is a sportscaster living in LA with a supermodel girlfriend, Finch
(Thomas), who has lost contact with his friends, is travelling the world, and
Stifler (Scott) is becoming aware of the fact that he’s a loser. Everyone is brought back to their hometown
just in time for their 13-year high school reunion, where they’re each
confronted with what they’ve given up in life; Jim and Michelle sex, Kevin Vicky
(Reid), Oz Heather (Suvari), Finch his chance at one true love, and Stifler…
well, actually, Stifler hasn’t given up anything and has insisted on remaining
the same person that he was in high school.
Hilarity ensues as each tries to come to terms with their desires and the
way life has turned out for them, and figure out how to reconcile what they
have with what they once wanted.
American Reunion is no American
Pie. Had I not seen the original
movie I highly doubt I would have enjoyed this one at all; it really offered
nothing new or original as a movie and is incapable of standing on its
own. It does, however, pay a nice
tribute to the series, and in many ways restores the dignity lost from the American Pie Presents straight to video
films. It has all of the classic
elements of an American Pie film: Jim
and his dad (Levy) share awkward conversations, Michelle tells band camp
stories, Stifler interacts with bodily fluids and throws a party, and of course
there’s Stifler’s mom (Coolidge). The
film may not have been exactly original, borrowing a lot from both the previous
films and essentially every other reunion-esque film about 30-somethings, but
it was funny. In all reality, it was
just about everything you can expect from an American Pie film.
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