Film Review: American Wedding (2003)

It is usually the third instalment when things start going downhill for a film series. American Pie, franchise based on the eponymous 1999 teen sex comedy, wasn’t an exception. Even its fans tend to agree that American Wedding a.k.a. American Pie 3: The Wedding, 2003 film directed by Jesse Dylan, is disappointment in comparison with first two parts and many consider it the least favourite part of the series.

While first two parts dealt with teenagers losing virginity and having sex, the scriptwriter Adam Herz here tries to deal with traditional and “proper” consequences of those activities, namely marriage. This is the step the protagonist Jim Levenstein (played by Jason Biggs) wants to take when he proposes his girlfriend Michelle Flaherty (played by Alyson Hannigan). She agrees but also, like anyone involved, makes clear that their obnoxious friend Steve Stifler (played by Seann William Scott) won’t be invited. He nevertheless hears about it and makes Jim change his mind by promising to teach him dance. In the meantime, Michelle are introducing not only her parents to Jim, but also her beautiful sister Cadence (played by January Jones), who catches attention of both Stiffler and Jim’s intellectual friend Paul Finch (played by Eddie Kaye Thomas).

To be perfectly clear, American Wedding is only slightly inferior to previous two films. Yet, those two films were far from comedy classics, so only small dip in quality was enough to give this film thumbs down. The main problem is in characters being only slightly adult, which deprived of “teen” aspect of teen sex comedy, as well as 1980s nostalgia, which had given previous films a lot of charm. American Wedding seems more generic, with somewhat less emphasis on sex and more on various bodily functions and gross out humour that made Hollywood comedies in early 21st Century so annoying. Another issue is large part of ensemble cast of previous two films being absent, which was compensated with Seann William Scott turning Stifler into classic example of breakout character who overwhelms anything and anyone around him, often leaving not the best impression. While there are couple of funny scenes, American Wedding seems more like a perfunctory Hollywood product than genuine comedy. Despite disappointing critics and some of the fans, the film had good results at the box office leading to spin-off series American Pie Presents, which was distributed direct-to-video. The fourth sequel which reunited the cast and characters was aptly named American Reunion and released in 2012.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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