American Reunion - (April 6th, 2012): R
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Opening Weekend Box Office: #2 with $21,514,080
Domestic Box Office Gross to-date: $39,900,000
Gross Revenue: $80,700,000
Production Budget: $50 million
Directors: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
No matter how popular a franchise may be, there is always the risk of losing your original audience when a significant gap exists between entries, not to mention the added challenge of attracting new members of the demographic that your core material is meant to attract. If you think about it, the gap in time facing American Reunion presents a significant challenge on two levels: first, because it had been thirteen years since the original American Pie and nine years since the last entry of that particular storyline (American Wedding) your original fan-base has likely matured beyond the point of gross-out humor, while the current desired 18-25 demographic is far too young to originally see (and thus fondly remember today) the material that serves as the main selling point for this film. Second, in that infamous nine-year-gap since the last film in the series, four critically-reviled and commercially-forgotten straight-to-DVD spin-offs distracted from the core story and severely diluted the integrity of the brand. Seriously, would college-aged moviegoers really care about the thirteen-year reunion of the Class of ’99 when the freshest American Pie memories they hold involve Band Camp, The Naked Mile, Beta House, and The Book of Love; none of which focused on the original storyline? To their credit, Universal did position its trailers to remind audiences of the legacy established by the 1999 raunchy comedy, but maybe more could have been done to raise awareness of the original series, like re-releasing the films digitally at a discount in an iTunes promotion, or using the USA Network (a division of NBCUniversal) to replay the movies on the weeks surrounding release and to highlight Steve Stifler as a “Character to Watch.” I’m not saying that I expected American Reunion to be a bomb, but whereas I was looking forward to the film, I simply didn’t think that marketing activities were strong enough to repair the franchise’s damaged integrity, thereby failing to make this newest release the kind of cinematic event that the historical core material ultimately deserves.
As the title heavily implies, American Reunion focuses on a high school reunion, in this case the thirteen year reunion of East Great Falls’ “Class of 1999,” all of whom who now struggle with different adult responsibilities. Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) and his wife Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) are struggling to keep the passion alive in their relationship; Chris “Oz” Ostreicher (Chris Klein) is an NFL sportscaster disillusioned with his supermodel girlfriend, Mia (Katrina Bowden); Kevin Meyers (Thomas Ian Nicholas) is married and fighting boredom as a home-based architect; Paul Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is a globetrotting adventurer; and Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott) is demeaned as a low-level temp at an investment firm. Seeking to reclaim the glory of the old days, the high school friends are ecstatic to reunite, but several complications arise upon the return home, particularly for Jim: not only is he struggling to cheer up his now-widowed father, Noah (Eugene Levy), but he is also tempted by the repeated advances of his next-door neighbor, the soon-to-be eighteen Kara (Ali Cobrin), whom Jim used to babysit. Oz and Kevin are both rattled by the appearance of their former girlfriends, Heather (Mena Suvari) and Vicky (Tara Reid) respectively, while Stifler reels at the drastic changes to the high school party atmosphere, and Finch pursues a former ugly-duckling classmate, Selena (Dania Ramirez). With such a blatant reminder of how much things have changed, the five friends must reevaluate their priorities in life and realize the inevitable implications of growth and maturity, albeit with a little help from some familiar faces.
No matter what age you are, nostalgia is a surprisingly positive factor that can be used to attract audiences, and American Reunion exploits this component is as strong a way as possible, throwing familiar faces together for the trademarked brand of humor that really can’t be replicated and that fans have missed for years. You have to admit that it would be pretty anticlimactic if a film with “reunion” in its title only featured a few cast members from the original, but the filmmakers were impressively able to bring back every iconic character, both main and minor, whether that included sex-symbol Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth); perpetual-liar Chuck Sherman, “The Sherminator” (Chris Owen); MILF Guy John (John Cho), or the wild seductress, Stifler’s Mom (Jennifer Coolidge). If you had to describe American Pie humor in a few words, two of those words would invariably be “crude” and “awkward,” and in this sequel, it is monumentally entertaining to watch Jason Biggs and the crew reengage in the outrageously crude and awkward situations that made them famous in the first place. The joy with which Stifler enacts revenge on high school students or the conflict/temptation that plagues Jim as the ridiculously gorgeous Kara makes advances paves the way for some brilliant comedy that will have you rolling in the theater. However, once the laughter subsides, some pretty blatant shortcomings come to light which prove that the film offers little to those who are not fans of the franchise.
In every basic narrative, some kind of conflict has to be introduced and resolved, and even though there is some leeway with the level of conflict that is needed to bind a comedy, there should still be enough to invest the audience in the welfare of the characters; sadly, the absence of this basic tenet is painfully obvious in American Reunion. In American Pie, the four main friends make a pact to lose their virginity by prom; in American Pie 2, Jim struggles to arrange the perfect night with the crush that he previously humiliated himself with the year prior, and in American Wedding, Jim and Michelle prepare for the beginning of the rest of their lives together. These three previous conflicts/events were enough to drive a movie, especially when they were faced by high school students/young adults, but this time around, it is a little hard to care about adults who are simply returning to their high school without any true plot device obstruction. In spite of this simple premise with little weight, the script is still convoluted with implausible subplots that were designed with little effort solely to justify the presence of old characters; for instance, Shannon Elizabeth’s Nadia, easily the most popular character from the original American Pie, shows up and disappears almost instantaneously, with little explanation and almost no impact…what a waste. Add these two primary factors together with the infrequent humor, and it is clear that the prime inspiration for this sequel was to simply throw together largely forgotten characters without a strong script and hope that lightning would strike a second time nearly a decade after a past success.
From a box office perspective, American Reunion proved unable to move completely past the challenges that I identified earlier in the review, as this newest entry in the historic franchise opened in second place behind The Hunger Games with just over $20 million. No one can deny that The Hunger Games presented one hell of a challenge to overcome in terms of box office receipts, but the record-breaking blockbuster was in its third weekend, and a fresh challenger with an established fan-base and significant star power should at least have been able to present a little more of a threat. Now, some analysts might be tempted to blame sub-par performance on an R-rating, but if that were the case, there is no way that 21 Jump Street would have been able to generate its impressive numbers; at the very least, Universal can rest easy that the modest $50 million budget has already been recovered. Surprisingly, this newest comedy has actually earned more overseas, which is probably thanks to an aggressive international distribution strategy and the generally high foreign interest in American pop culture...and like it or not, the American Pie series will always represent a pop culture phenomenon. In the end, the novelty of revisiting the familiar will please fans, but beyond that, this largely uninspired narrative proves that the story surrounding the ground-breaking and raunchy teenagers has completely run its course, and therefore should not be revisited.
Overall Recommendation: Medium
