American Pie: Reunion
The entire original cast return in a very, very unlikely triumph.
Overview
Damn you, nostalgia! You've long been buttressing reactionary politics, and now you've gone and made what should have been a plainly repellent gross-out comedy into a fun two hours.
The fact is, viewers will open their hearts to the five dirty, semi-grown men at the centre of American Pie: Reunion, and open them right from the start. It can't be helped; we've grown up with them, even if our visits took place with increasing levels of reluctance until we happily closed the door on them in 2003, when Jim (Jason Biggs) wed Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) in the tired American Wedding.
In the present day, the couple have a two-year-old son but no sex life a tragedy for the two dorky hornbags who separately experimented at band camp and molested a pie. When they're invited to their belated high-school reunion (it's 13 years since they graduated in American Pie, sticklers), they reunite with the gang they've lost touch with: Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) has a normal-looking life as an architect, Chris (Chris Klein) is a sportscaster ill at ease with his model girlfriend and celebrity lifestyle, Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) seems to just wander around being awesome, and Stifler (Seann William Scott) carries on with the entitled air of someone who was at the top of the hierarchy in high school and nowhere else.
Whereas the previous films featured high-school-grade humour and high-school-aged characters, the new instalment flings high-school-grade humour at people who look a lot like grown-ups. Which is kind of great. Let's face it: people in their late twenties and early thirties are nearly universal in their premature ageing, declining alcohol tolerance, reliance on mod-cons and sudden preference for dinner parties. Boring! When we laugh at Stifler's disgust at being handed bottles of wine by subdued guests at his planned keg party, what we're really laughing at is ourselves. It's a nice bit of comedy therapy for late-Gen Ys in various stages of denial.
The main disappointment of American Pie: Reunion is some of the things that both the filmmakers and audience still find 'gross' men kissing and the performing of oral sex on overweight women among them. Of course, the films are based entirely on a discomfort with the body that it'd be nice if grown adults were over.
But as long as we're not, the other pleasant surprise in this fourth film of the franchise is that it builds on initial audience goodwill by doing a lot of things very right, with joke set-ups that twist out of your grasp before you can predict the punchline. Each of its characters is given resolution, some particularly poignant ones, and much-loved minor characters are included, from Jim's Dad (Eugene Levy) to Stifler's Mom (Jennifer Coolidge) and the MILF Guys (John Cho and Justin Isfeld). It's a very, very funny ballet of body parts and fluids, choreographed with the care and energy that went into the first American Pie.
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