Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: American Reunion

 


American Reunion is the final (thankfully) nail in the American Pie franchise that started out nearly perfectly with the 1999 original movie that was the 1990s iconic coming-of-age comedy. It spawned two sequels with members of the original cast and many direct-to-DVD spin-off movies that only managed to get Eugene Levy and Chris Owen.

The setting for this movie is (for some reason) the 13-year class reunion of the East Great Falls High class of 1999. It brought back many, but not all, of the original cast members and did the very predictable here is where everyone is in their lives thing. It has some funny moments, but nothing rivaled the original film, or even American Pie 2 or American Wedding, which were themselves not as good as the first movie. The best was when it was kind of breaking the fourth wall and making fun of itself. Some of the original cast members like Shannon Elizabeth had a blink and you will miss them cameos which were pretty pointless. Unfortunately, the movie tended to gravitate toward the raunchy gross-out comedy that worked in the original movie, but not so much with characters that are nearly thirty years old.

The Blu-Ray extras include an audio commentary on the movie with the writers/directors and a video commentary in which pop-ups with the actors appear sporadically to discuss different things from the movie. There are about thirty minutes of deleted and extended scenes, some alternate takes, and a gag reel. Then, there is a making-of documentary and a few short behind-the-scenes featurettes. Some of the extras are pretty good, others not so much, but there is a decent amount there if you like watching them.

Overall, the movie is okay and did finally put an end to the franchise which should have probably just ended with American Wedding. Thankfully, it pretends that the stupid spin-off movies do not exist and just focused on the main group of characters. I think they would have been better off just making the setting the 10-year reunion and having all of the original cast members more involved with more mature humor than the juvenile humor the movie was still using.

No comments: