American Pie: The Wedding film review

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AMERICAN PIE: THE WEDDING

Making a cute gross out movie would seem a contradiction, but the idea has obviously proved successful given American Pie: The Wedding is the third installment of the American Pie series. In 1972, when Divine ate dog poo in John Waters' Pink Flamingos, it was considered subversive. Now when Stifler (Seann William Scott) does it in America's number one box office movie, along with scenes of a dog giving fellatio, pubic hair blowing on the wedding cake and a sexual encounter with an elderly grandmother, it's considered mainstream entertainment.

The first American Pie provided plenty of laughs, but both follow-ups have been poor quality retreads that only serve to highlight the original's superiority. This time around the director's baton has been handed to Bob's boy Jesse Dylan. Whatever artistic genes were passed on aren't much in evidence here as the film stumbles and stutters its way through a collection of stupid sketches that barely raise a titter. On paper it may have appeared funny, but the film's poor sense of timing insure that all too often the punchline either comes in the wrong place or not at all.

Most of the old faces are back, exploiting the affection that comes with familiarity. The characters of Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs), Michelle Flaherty (Alyson Hannigan), Stifler, Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Myers (Thomas Ian Nichols) have managed to find themselves a warm spot in the hearts of those who've come to embrace the sort of puerile crassness pioneered by the likes of the hilarious Animal House.

Where the American Pie films differ from the slew of similarly skewered movies is that they try to offset their cruder tendencies with an underlying sweetness. It's why American Wedding includes prolonged and pointless scenes involving two strippers while at the same time extolling the virtues of fidelity and marriage.