MOVIE REVIEW - American Reunion

It's been a number of years, but the American Pie troupe is back in force, and all grown up now in the fourth installment, American Reunion.

All of the original cast, and characters return 12 years after graduating high school, and come back to their small hometown for a high school reunion. But, don't panic, they are still all the same old sex-crazed people we knew from the original trilogy. Constantly finding themselves in drunken, compromising sexual situations. So not much has changed.

This whole series was of course very popular and a whole generation kind of grew up with these characters. And there are come funny moments in these movies, and here too. I always thought if you took the best scenes from each of the first three and put them in one movie, you would have had a really funny flick. But it's strung out over three, and it's a lot of the same over and over again. And so is this. Be advised, you do need knowledge of the first three to get all the humor in this movie. They do reference the past a lot.

There is some growth in our characters, and they try real hard to have a heart and attempt to put a more grown up spin on this, but it's still American Pie. They do bring in a few new characters to try to breathe some new life into this, and some of that does work. But as fresh as the new faces might be, the formula is still the same. Plus at times take you till the next level and go for the gross-out formula which is really not needed at all.

Should be noted that this series was the launching pad for many young stars that have gone onto better things both on TV and in the movies. And it was no small feat to get them all back together for this reunion. Commendable. But sadly the end is left wide open, and there seems to be ground work laid down for yet more American Something, to come down the road at a later date. And that is more than unfortunate. As time goes on, these characters and actors will look sillier and sillier. But that's Hollywood.

American Reunion. If you were a big fan of the originals, then this may be for you. Or you may find that you've grown up more than our characters, and you may have more and different things to so. Nothing really new here.