Continuing our slog through “high school” or youth based movies today, comes the latest, and supposedly last entry in the American Pie franchise. The good news? It may not be as bad as you were expecting. The bad news? That’s still not the same as saying it’s a good movie.
What Worked: It’s one of the few franchises where they actually attempt to create characters instead of stick figures that dodge explosions, and even if that doesn’t entirely work, it’s a worthy effort. And as the one actor determined to not let this be just a paycheck movie, Sean William Scott reminds us of why he’s the most successful actor to come out of these films. His Stifler is violently arrested in his high school years, and clearly having a blast as the one character genuinely looking forward to a high school reunion. I can’t say his lines are as funny as they were 13 years ago (when I was also in high school) but that only speaks to a larger problem…
What Doesn’t Work:…Is this material now dated? Yes and no. The American Pie films always had one thing going for it in that they were the first sex comedies to really get that the women were going to be as much into the action as the men, and it wasn’t just a comedy where young boys tried to score, it was one where the women repeatedly kept turning the tables on them (the foreign exchange student begging for a sexy dance, the “band geek” who’s more experienced than you are, etc.). It was the first horn dog series to peal back the curtain into the current internet-porn/metrosexual age where even the men would also be treated as sex objects.
That’s all on display in this film too, but the film is also trying to serve up a slice of nostalgia for a time when even sex comedies felt a little more innocent (the cynical, hipster misanthropy never existed in the American Pie films like it does today), but that doesn’t really work at all. You can’t spend all this time with a group of guys that essentially just want to get laid, then come back a decade later and pretend they’re deeper characters than that. It’s asking you to feel nostalgic for masturbation jokes in a way that just feels weird. Plus, there’s no denying that they were only able to reunite the original cast because nearly all of them have been up to jackshit over the last decade. You haven’t smelt desperation until you’ve seen Ian Nichols and Tara Reid (the film’s least successful actors…Reid a Lohan-esque disaster area since this series) go through a contrived “romantic” plot line you care nothing about.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Just because you were able to get the original cast back together, doesn’t mean they all deserve their own plot line. Still, how can you really improve on a movie sequel that was clearly just designed to make money for its struggling cast and badly-in-need-of-a-hit studio (Universal, also trying to reboot the Bourne franchise later this summer)? You know it’s pretty futile and that maybe this movie was as good as it could have been.