Jim and Michelle are getting married, but before they can live their happily ever after lives Jim has to learn the essential steps to becoming a married man.
--Matthew
American Wedding
Directors: Jesse Dylan
Producers: Chris Moore
Writers: Adam Herz
Features: Option to view unrated version of film, deleted scenes and outtakes, featurettes, wedding video
Characters:
Jim Levinstein - Jason Biggs
Stifler - Seann William Scott
Michelle Flaherty - Alyson Hannigan
Jim's dad - Eugene Levy
Genre: Comedy
Review:
The third and final chapter of the Pie saga. American Wedding took me by surprise. Usually films like this tend to wear out in the third entry, but this film still had that spark that made the first two films such a success. Jim and Michelle are getting married and everything keeps going wrong for Jim and it seems the wedding is doomed from the start, but with the help of his friends, Jim does his best to get through it. Wedding is missing several of the cast members from the first two films, but the film has such a steady and good pace, that it would have likely slowed down the film had there been any additional characters. The biggest cast memebers missing are Chris Klein, Tara Reid, Mena Suvari, and Shannon Elizabeth. Though they are not entirely missed, I still think a word about what they have been up to would have been in order.
This time Stifler is the star of the film and the wedding actually plays out more like a back story. When Michelle's sister, Cadence comes to town, Stilfer and Finch battle it out for her and this is carried throughout the film and is one of the many funny moments. The Bachelor Party in the middle of the film is very funny as well. I enjoyed this film much more than the second one, because that film felt too bloated and had to follow so many characters and eventually felt like five movies packed into one, but this film moves at a brisk pace and has many good moments along the way.
There is also a fair share of nudity in the unrated version, with about 8 minutes of bonus footage, but nothing that helps or hurts. Both cuts of the film appear on the dvd as well as two commentary tracks by the filmakers. The A/V quality is good, if not a bit underachieved. My guess is that there were just too many features put on the disk, that they raised the Bit Rate, thus sacrificing picture quality.
The deleted scenes were a bit of a let down as most of them are just slower moments that needed to go. The unrated dvd has two exclusive features. One is on grooming the groom and the other one is the bachelor party. None of them seem very interesting, but they are worth a look at least once. The two commentaries stood out as the disk's best feature. They talk mostly of how they came up with ideas and how Stifler developed over the three films.
The dvd also includes the R rated cut of the film, but the unrated is the way to go. There is also a gift set available that has a bonus disk talking about all three films.
Although flawed, "American Wedding" stands out as one of the better recent sequels and a great way to end the series.
----Matthew