It ought to be no fun watching characters you came to know as randy, unruly high school students turn into grown-ups with jobs, families and crappy sex lives. That’s what happens to real-life people; why subject fictional characters to it? But somehow American Reunion — the third movie sequel to Paul and Chris Weitz’s hall-of-fame teen sex comedy 1999 American Pie — makes the harsh reality jolt almost painless.
The picture is devilishly entertaining, not least because it’s laced with just the sort of dumb raunchy jokes you hate yourself for laughing at. But it also preserves, to a degree, the elemental sweetness that made the original (though not the two subsequent sequels) so distinctive: In the first movie, embarrassment and awkwardness over sex results not just in a mess in the kitchen, but in painful and unbridgeable rifts between people. In American Reunion, that awkwardness may have lessened somewhat, but it hasn’t completely gone away. You can think you’re trading old problems for new ones, only to find that the old ones are perennial – they just find different ways to flourish in your life.
That’s a discomforting idea in the midst of a picture that trades mostly in gags about tube socks’ being used for illicit personal business, nostalgia for the mind-blowing oral sex of yore (meaning high school) and men who, as they near middle age with all its attendant spare tires and love handles, can’t help looking hungrily at the nubile teenage babes they used to be able to attract. Directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (the masterminds behind the always-silly but also surprisingly progressive Harold and Kumar franchise) are perhaps more comfortable dealing with ridiculous sex jokes than they are with raw human feeling. Still, American Reunion chugs along with brash confidence, unembarrassed…
Full Story »Good news and bad news about American Reunion based on the very first (and very redband) teaser trailer that has just surfaced: Jason Biggs’s Jim still isn’t locking the door when he masturbates. This could be good news for American Pie purists who hoped the franchise would get back to basics this April, and bad news for fans who hoped Jim would never have to pleasure himself again with footwear after marrying Alyson Hannigan’s band geek Michelle in the third and most recent Pie installment, American Wedding.
Warning: The teaser is NSFW, not appropriate for kids, and deserving of its restricted redband label.
Like I was saying, things haven’t changed much for Jim in the past decade (based on this promo) other than the fact that a small child now interrupts his self-love sessions rather than his father (Eugene Levy, who will also return for Reunion) and the fact that he is married to a girl who also understands the value of alone time. Unseen in this sneak peak are Thomas Ian Nicholas, Chris Klein, Seann William Scott, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Tara Reid, Natasha Lyonne, Mena Suvari, Shannon Elizabeth and Jennifer Coolidge, whose returning characters will miraculously all show up for East Great Falls’ ten-year reunion.
In case you weren’t motivated to see American Reunion based on the above trailer alone, know that this installment is directed by Harold & Kumar writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.
VERDICT: Maybe it’s finally time to put memories of all of those direct-to-DVD Pie spin-off films behind us?
American Reunion opens in theaters April 6.
[via Vulture]
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