By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs: American Reunion
AMERICAN REUNION (Two and a Half Stars)
U. S.: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, 2012 (Universal)
American Reunion is indubitably the best of all the American Pie series sequels. Don’t think I don‘t know how much that last judgment is a case of damning with faint praise, or praising with faint damns, or whatever.
But what can you expect from a franchise whose original premise consisted of losing your virginity in high school, with pies? In Michigan? The new movie, which probably should have been called American Pie: The Reunion — this title sounds like a serious doc — has brought back virtually everybody you might remember from the various Pie casts: from horny teen turned horny 30-something repressed hubby Jim Levensheim (Jason Biggs) and his even more desperate widowed caterpillar-browed dad (Eugene Levy), to Jim’s four horny chums — sportscaster Oz (Chris Klein), wayward intellectual Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), bearded good guy schmo Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), and the horniest of them all, the irrepressible Steve Stifler a.k.a.. The Stiffmeister (Seann William Scott)
Also back for the blast: the guys’ various gal pals and lust objects including Band Camper Michelle, now Jim’s wife (Allyson Hannigan), Vicky (Tara Reid), Heather (Mena Suvari), Jessica (Natasha Lyonne), and the American Pie itself (or at lest its recipe) — and it has all of them doing exactly what you’d expect from the third sequel to a sexy hit suburban teen movie. The one major difference: They feel guity about it. (Though not as guilty as you may feel watching the movie.)
It’s not really a very good show or a very funny one, though it’s not bad for most of the time, and it has at l;east one thing going for it: Reunion’s writer-directors — Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, scripters (and occasional directors) of the Harold and Kumar movies — seem to like these Adam Herz characters and to feel some sense of responsibility to them, and to the fact that they’ve grown older if not less ridiculous. That doesn’t mean that the five avoid doing the same damn dopey things, and getting into the same inane predicaments this time around. But at least they express a kind of remorse., or a vague self-awareness. (Everyone but Stifler, of course.) And the movie tries, not very successfully, to give them more credibility.
Anyway, there are two great characters in this movie, played by two actors who, I’m convinced, are the main reasons for the series’ success: Levy as Jim’s appallingly pseudo-hip and likably corny Dad, and Scott as the Stiffmeister, horndog in excelsis.
These two are as good — or bad — as ever. Here, Reunion takes Mr. Levensheim to a wild party. and pairs him up (memorably, under the credits) with Stifler’s legendary Mom (Jennifer Coolidge), who has grown up even more erratically than her son.
As for Stifler — well, anyone who went though high school and/or college during one Sexual Revolution or another, and kept their eyes open, probably knows what a well-observed, hilarious, only a bit exaggerated character Stifler is, what a classic party animal generallismo, The other four of these East Great Falls High chummos are affable but fairly typical movie guys, waiting for their Hangover. Biggs plays (well) an amiable neurotic, Klein a leaden jock, Nicholas a glib little guy, and Thomas an over-imaginative tale-teller and fantasist. (Finch claims to have translated ‘War and Peace’ into Latin, for fun.) We can recognize things we know in all of them, a little.
But everything about Stifler rings either true or funny — from his omnipresent wild-ass grin, always somewhere on his face even if its lurking behind his ears, to his congenital madman squint, to his maddeningly no-brakes behavior and his flair for colossal screw-ups. The problem with Stifler, for some critics, may be that they feel compelled to express disapproval of The Stiffmeister’s pathological antics (as if the younger generation might watch Stifler taking a dump in the movie’s bad-ass beach bullies’ beer cooler, and be driven to emulate him).
The point about Stifler is that, even though his work life is show here as a failure (he’s a corporate temp with delusions of grandeur), he‘s also the crazy-swinging comic engine behind the whole movie, the daffily good-natured, insanely uninhibited erotomaniac who makes things happen and has no shame. I knew some Stiflers. So did some of you. Scott nails them all. Or most of them, anyway.
Just the reintroduction of Jim‘s pop and The Stiffmeister alone is enough to raise a little indecent nostalgia in this movie. Or bonhomie, maybe. Not enough to make it a good movie, but at least enough to avoid it being an irredeemably bad one. Be forewarned. Unless you like this kind of show, you won‘t …But then again, Stifler’s back. Somebody‘s singing “Louie Louie” with the original lyrics. (Mr. Leversheim maybe. Or an I only imagining it?) So the party must be going on somewhere. Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie/ Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry...
