Movie Review: American Wedding

American Wedding

The third installment of the American Pie franchise, American Wedding picks up three years after the story told in American Pie 2. The kids we came to know as high school students are now college graduates, and are ready to take the next step in their lives. For Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), that means getting married, and the whole gang is invited to the wedding.

The movie opens with a marriage proposal that will doubtless never be forgotten by the participants - or the unsuspecting audience. The moment the proposal is accepted, the plans for the wedding go to warp speed and most of the rest of the film deals with the trials and tribulations of the two - one an embarrassment waiting to happen, the other the quintessential band geek - as they prepare for their big day. Jim's dad (Eugene Levy) is ever present with helpful advice whether it's necessarily appropriate or not, and Michelle's stuffy parents, Harold and Mary Flaherty (Fred Willard and Deborah Rush) reluctantly join the support group for their daughter and her fiancé. Michelle's sister, Cadence (January Jones), does her best to be a helpful maid of honor, but she's distracted by her focus on finding a guy for herself. She doesn't have too much trouble finding a couple; the trouble begins when two very different men fight for her attentions. Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) insists he's over Stifler's Mom and that he's ready to move on. He sees the beautiful Cadence as a step in that direction. But Stifler (Seann William Scott) also wants to get his hands on Michelle's sister, and he pulls out all the stops to get her naked, including becoming a man he's very much not.

The action in American Wedding is fast, furious, and very, very funny as the scene moves rapidly from places as disparate as a Chicago gay bar to a beautiful Lake Michigan resort, and from a bachelor party gone seriously awry to a bonding moment with the Flaherty family dogs. American Wedding isn't going to win any awards for acting or writing (though it's got some real comedic gems scattered throughout), but it's everything it advertises itself to be. And where the American Pie frachise is concerned, that's saying something. I laughed myself to tears more than once during this film, and the rest of those in the nearly sold-out theatre did the same. In fact, as the movie ended, I watched the people exiting and saw a grin on almost every face. That's probably a better recomendation for seeing this film than any words I could contrive.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: American Wedding is rated R for strong sexual content, crude humor, and language. This is not a movie for kids or even young teens. It is also not a movie for those without a well-developed sense of humor. But for those young adults of about 16 and up - and for the rest of us who can remember some of our own stupid teenage moves - it will provide a truly entertaining evening out. And whether or not the stuffier critics like this movie (they won't), isn't that really the bottom line where the best movies are concerned?