I never got the appeal of this series. It's a mess of bad, juvenile and -most importantly- unfunny humor, the kind that I can see why it'd appeal to thirteen-year-olds, even though I can't see myself liking it even when I was thirteen.
But I know people who like it-- and by "know" I don't mean on the Internet. People I know well, in life, like this piece of shit of a series. It has had a boatload of sequels, a few not even getting a theatrical release. After the third film in the series, they always cast new, young people to keep in line with the theme of "oh, silly undersexed teenagers".
The latest installment, called "American Reunion" recruits everyone still standing from the first movie and attempts to take a crack at the generic "where the heroes are in ten years from when we first saw them". It's a Hollywood staple and I get it. I'm not sure the writers do.
The humor is every bit as juvenile as it was the first time around. What the writers of this cancer of comedy consider "funny" is scatological humor, BDSM, sex and boobs. I get why someone would show breasts in their motion picture (and they're great breasts, make no mistake), I'm just not sure why they would think they're funny.
Oh look, Stifler took a dump in the jocks' beer mini-fridge. Hilarious.
Oh look; hot 18-year-old character is naked. Great breasts, but why? The character is supposed to create conflict, but thanks to the level of writing all you'll remember is that she's topless for five minutes.
Oh look; Oz's girlfriend is a sex-crazed, pill-popping bitch and she kind of rapes him at some point. But he's a guy, so it's really funny. Right?
Oh, look; Jim and Michelle wear weird uniforms to get off. There is consistency and then there is repeating the same joke until someone pulls out a .45 and shoots you off the fucking stage.
What angers me the most about this film is that it has no idea what the hell it wants to do. There are a few moments, not good moments but at least watchable, when the humor shimmers down and you can see some character-building. The original characters have grown, they have changed and they tread the familiar ground of "what happened to us".
This could make at the very least a serviceable movie, but it occupies the same space as the aneurysm-inducing humor.
Actually, I do have to wonder who the hell the audience for this film is. Traditionally this series appeals to teenagers (especially the younger ones), but when even the damned title is "reunion", you obviously aim at drawing in the people who were teenagers when the first movie came out over a decade ago.
It's why you'd want to approach your characters with some semblance of maturity, to connect with your audience. There is enough pandering to this audience via the cheapest method of them all (i.e. random references to the earlier films) to confuse newcomers anyway.
I get trying to get the maturing characters in adventures reminiscent of their high-school years, but there is a significant difference between situations being far-fetched and your characters consistently acting with the mentality of a high school student.
I don't know who this movie was made for. Every character moment is designed to speak to the old-timers in the audience, that have grown like the characters they once loved. All the humor, on the other hand, can't appeal to anyone over the age of 15 (and that's pushing it).
I don't know why I have seen every installment in this series, even though I hated it from the moment I laid my eyes on the first movie. I think I'm trying to keep up with the level of stupidity humanity will rise to. It's fascinating, a train-wreck in the making.
What I do know is that our pop-culture is made to reflect our concerns, social or otherwise, at any given time-- hence the term POP-culture. The original "American Pie", piece of shit of a movie as it may had been, became part of the the zeitgeist at the time, because there hadn't been many (if any) teenage comedies that confronted sex without pussy-footing around the issue.
Its success was less because of the quality of the humor and more because of the way it tackled its subject material. That's why even its horrible gags found an audience. I fucking hate the movie and even I can understand it essentially cut the bullshit, demystified and demythified sex for the people who are the most concerned about it, i.e. teenagers.
But its time has come and gone. We view sex under a different light and a film like "American Reunion" ends up negating the first film altogether, by trivializing its subject matter and purely playing it for the worst kind of "laughs".
The tragedy is that there was meat in the story, there was the chance to once again demythify sex, this time in the sense of adult sex and the problems it brings in long-terms relationships and whatnot, by approaching it in a slightly more liberating and aloof way, like we usually view it in high school. Come full circle.
But no; we have to retread the same ground and do our damnedest to appeal to the teenagers in the audience.
Seriously, fuck this movie.
But I know people who like it-- and by "know" I don't mean on the Internet. People I know well, in life, like this piece of shit of a series. It has had a boatload of sequels, a few not even getting a theatrical release. After the third film in the series, they always cast new, young people to keep in line with the theme of "oh, silly undersexed teenagers".
The latest installment, called "American Reunion" recruits everyone still standing from the first movie and attempts to take a crack at the generic "where the heroes are in ten years from when we first saw them". It's a Hollywood staple and I get it. I'm not sure the writers do.The humor is every bit as juvenile as it was the first time around. What the writers of this cancer of comedy consider "funny" is scatological humor, BDSM, sex and boobs. I get why someone would show breasts in their motion picture (and they're great breasts, make no mistake), I'm just not sure why they would think they're funny.
Oh look, Stifler took a dump in the jocks' beer mini-fridge. Hilarious.
Oh look; hot 18-year-old character is naked. Great breasts, but why? The character is supposed to create conflict, but thanks to the level of writing all you'll remember is that she's topless for five minutes.
Oh look; Oz's girlfriend is a sex-crazed, pill-popping bitch and she kind of rapes him at some point. But he's a guy, so it's really funny. Right?
Oh, look; Jim and Michelle wear weird uniforms to get off. There is consistency and then there is repeating the same joke until someone pulls out a .45 and shoots you off the fucking stage.
What angers me the most about this film is that it has no idea what the hell it wants to do. There are a few moments, not good moments but at least watchable, when the humor shimmers down and you can see some character-building. The original characters have grown, they have changed and they tread the familiar ground of "what happened to us".This could make at the very least a serviceable movie, but it occupies the same space as the aneurysm-inducing humor.
Actually, I do have to wonder who the hell the audience for this film is. Traditionally this series appeals to teenagers (especially the younger ones), but when even the damned title is "reunion", you obviously aim at drawing in the people who were teenagers when the first movie came out over a decade ago.
It's why you'd want to approach your characters with some semblance of maturity, to connect with your audience. There is enough pandering to this audience via the cheapest method of them all (i.e. random references to the earlier films) to confuse newcomers anyway.
I get trying to get the maturing characters in adventures reminiscent of their high-school years, but there is a significant difference between situations being far-fetched and your characters consistently acting with the mentality of a high school student.
I don't know who this movie was made for. Every character moment is designed to speak to the old-timers in the audience, that have grown like the characters they once loved. All the humor, on the other hand, can't appeal to anyone over the age of 15 (and that's pushing it).
I don't know why I have seen every installment in this series, even though I hated it from the moment I laid my eyes on the first movie. I think I'm trying to keep up with the level of stupidity humanity will rise to. It's fascinating, a train-wreck in the making.
What I do know is that our pop-culture is made to reflect our concerns, social or otherwise, at any given time-- hence the term POP-culture. The original "American Pie", piece of shit of a movie as it may had been, became part of the the zeitgeist at the time, because there hadn't been many (if any) teenage comedies that confronted sex without pussy-footing around the issue.
Its success was less because of the quality of the humor and more because of the way it tackled its subject material. That's why even its horrible gags found an audience. I fucking hate the movie and even I can understand it essentially cut the bullshit, demystified and demythified sex for the people who are the most concerned about it, i.e. teenagers.
But its time has come and gone. We view sex under a different light and a film like "American Reunion" ends up negating the first film altogether, by trivializing its subject matter and purely playing it for the worst kind of "laughs".
The tragedy is that there was meat in the story, there was the chance to once again demythify sex, this time in the sense of adult sex and the problems it brings in long-terms relationships and whatnot, by approaching it in a slightly more liberating and aloof way, like we usually view it in high school. Come full circle. But no; we have to retread the same ground and do our damnedest to appeal to the teenagers in the audience.
Seriously, fuck this movie.
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