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.
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.
