STOP!
You’re mad already. You think the question in the headline is rude and condescending. It’s not meant that way at all, it’s a genuine question with nothing mean-spirited behind it.
I have been reading the comments on American Reunion and have noticed pretty much all of them disagree with me and found the film extremely funny. The most recent one from Roger says, “Man gotta completely disagree, this was laugh out loud hilarious. The whole theater was laughing from beginning to end. Great movie, especially for a 4th installment.”
The question I ask in the headline is more about trying to figure out why some people are liking it so much more than myself. Comedy is such a hard genre to gauge when it comes to what different people find funny and I’m hoping to see if this film can help us find some answers.
I am now 35-years-old and saw the first American Pie film when it came out in 1999. I was 22 and I loved it. The second one didn’t exactly do it for me, but when I saw American Wedding in 2003 I called it “the best installment yet.” I even went so far as to end the review writing, “If you don’t enjoy adolescent humor and potty jokes then stay home and don’t bore us with your uptight sense of humor.” Have I become as uptight as the people I was chastising? Tell me it isn’t so!
Nine years later and American Reunion bored me. Nothing felt new. Nothing felt fresh. Everyone seemed to be playing the characters they vaguely remembered playing ten years earlier instead of embodying those characters as they had in the past. Everything felt forced and I didn’t like it.
I’m wondering — for those that liked it and those that didn’t — how old were you when you saw the first American Pie film? I can’t firmly come up with a theory without first hearing your answers, but I have a sneaking suspicion many that are praising the film are likely the age I was when I reviewed and thoroughly enjoyed American Wedding.
Now I don’t want this to turn into the mess it turned into when American Reunion producer Chris Moore took to Facebook to try and defend his film writing the following after asking, “How do we get people to see this in theaters?”
… and then he said …
“I do not want $50 mil I do not want teen age girls owning the boxoffice. No ofense [sic] to them, I am rasing [sic] a beautiful one myself, but if the only movies that make any dough are twilight and hunger games than that is all you are going to see … Now I am pandering purposely because I want to win.”
This is a genuine question. There are many reasons for liking and disliking American Reunion, but I think most of it stems from our attachment to the franchise — the fresher it is in our minds the more we’re likely to enjoy this latest installment. Had I seen American Pie five years earlier I would have had a greater level of attachment to the characters then and going forward. Now, however, not so much.
While I had genuine problems with American Reunion outside of the jokes (many of which I did laugh at), I believe your liking or disliking of the film is 95% due to your attachment to the characters and how much you’re able to overlook certain issues.
So when I ask how old you are and how old you were when you saw American Pie, I’m not suggesting you’re an idiot for liking American Reunion, just curious to see when you first got into the franchise. Maybe my theory is all wrong, but it can’t be a bad thing to explore it.
