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'American Wedding'—Review

3 Stars—2003

By Brandon WettigPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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So like I said in my review of American Pie 2, making a sequel to a comedy film is an extremely tough thing to do because not only do you have to recapture that magic and the humor of the first humor while taking the story in a new direction and in some cases like this one, keep the shock value fresh. The American Pie series has always prided itself with it's sexual, gross humor and when the first movie came out, we really had never seen this type of humor on this scale before. Sure, blowjobs and masturbation were topics of discussion in previous teen movies, but now, we have dudes drinking semen-laced beer, orgasming on webcam to the entire school, and of course, being caught having sex with an apple pie on the kitchen counter. So now that the shock value is over, what do you do next? Well, unfortunately, no American Pie sequel has been able to recreate the magic to the same degree as the first film did, but the first two sequels do give us some great scenes of gross sexual humor, really heartfelt moments and even a dance number.

So all of these movies have always had Jim as the main character, or at least, his story is the main plot line of the movie, but here I would argue that it is Stiffler who becomes the main character as this film tackles the change of Steven Stiffler's character, or at least show that there is some decency in him. So after Jim and Michelle decide to get married, Stiffler is not only mad that he wasn't invited, he sees this as an opportunity to have a crazy bachelor party full of girls, booze and boobs, boobs, butt, and more boobs. Sounds like a fun time right? However, once one of Michelle's cousins join the wedding, it's a fun change of character for Stiffler as he puts on the "nice guy" act in an attempt to sleep with her while Finch, the spiritual intellectual friend, changes into the vulgar, outspoken clown that Stiffler once was. These scenes add a ton of laughs and are a nice love triangle.

Kevin is still around for emotional support and Oz is nowhere to be found. And while I love all these characters, this movie made the right decision on keeping the focus on Jim's wedding and the antics between Stiffler and Finch. Adding in another B story about Kevin and Vicky and having Oz have another story with his girlfriend would take away focus from the main storyline and seem very unnecessary since those stories had their endings in previous movies. No Sherman, no Nadia, no band camp, this film didn't simply go the easy route and re-visit every single place from previous movies, it moved the story forward which many comedy sequels do not do.

They take this film in new directions such as having all the guys going to Chicago to find a certain wedding designer to design Michelle's dress only to end up at a gay bar with Stiffler getting into a dance off. Or having Stiffler, Kevin and Finch invite over some hookers to Jim's place to surprise him only to have Michelle's parents walk in. All great scenes with tons of laughs. Although there is one particular scene that got so gross, I couldn't even watch.

But the main reason why I like this movie is that no matter how much embarrassment Jim has to endure, he gets his happy ending. His parents still love him even though he constantly finds himself in the most bizarre of situations, and he marries the girl of his dreams, a band-geek who just happened to accept his prom proposal one day many years ago. His friends care for him and everyone gets a happy ending. Even Stiffler who have two extremely embarrassing things happen to him does learn to channel in his crude ways and actually do something out of love and friendship. These movies may be about sex and gross humor, but American Pie has always been about love, friendship and being optimistic. No matter what happens, dreams can come true.

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