American Wedding Cake, Yes, but No More ‘Pie’
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The pie is gone, and in its place is a humble, albeit small, serving of maturity and wedding cake for dessert.
Movie “American Wedding,” the third and final chapter — its backers say — in the wildly successful series of raunchy, male coming-of-age comedies that started with 1999’s “American Pie,” debuts in theaters on Friday.
But there will be no “American Baby” after Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) tie the knot in “Wedding.” Nor will there be an “American Divorce,” the movie’s makers said in recent interviews.
“All the characters have gone from A-to-B. There is no more journey for them to take.” said series creator and writer Adam Herz, 30. “We’ve watched them grow from kids to adults.”
Even Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott), the oversexed troublemaker among the group of 20-something friends — Jim, Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Finch (Eddie Kay Thomas) — does a little growing up in “American Wedding.”
When the first “Pie” hit theaters, it was in the vanguard of then-popular “gross-out” comedies. Several scenes pushed the boundaries of good taste including one in which Jim, a virgin, uses his mother’s homemade pie as a sexual aid.
But in the end, “Pie” served up a rather sweet message about high schoolers losing their virginity, and the storytelling helped boost its U.S. and Canadian ticket sales to $101 million and made it a hit.
In 2001, “Pie 2” had the friends on college summer break and primed for a raunchy sex romp. While it raked in $145 million in ticket sales, “Pie 2” won only mixed reviews.
Herz said the storyteller in him was not pleased with “Pie 2,” so for “Wedding” he went back to what worked in the first film. It wasn’t the gross-out humor — though there is plenty of that in “Wedding” including a running gag about shaving pubic hair — but rather it was an emotional tale of what people will do for love and for the ones they love.
YOU GOT TO HAVE HEART
“It’s more like the first movie,” said Biggs, “It’s a movie with heart.”
Eugene Levy, who plays Jim’s geeky yet emotionally available father, called the new movie’s recipe “raunchiness underpinned by the sentimentality of the wedding.”
As the movie picks up, Jim has decided to pop the big question to Michelle, with whom he finally hooked up at band camp in “Pie 2.” She, of course, says “yes” to his proposal.
What follows is a walk down a rather well-worn pathway to the altar. There is the telling of the good news to friends, the meeting of the parents, the choice of a best man and bridesmaid and selection of a wedding dress, a caterer and a chapel — which is difficult if the groom is Jewish and the bride is not.
But that pathway in a “Pie” movie is anything but well-worn. In this case, the walk includes sex in public places, a bachelors’ night out in a gay bar and a war of words and pranks between Stifler and Finch for the affection of Michelle’s sister, Cadence (January Jones).
While Jim and Michelle’s wedding is the movie’s climax, the love triangle between Stifler, Cadence and Finch provides much of the movie’s tension. To win Cadence’s devotion, Stifler must curb his overactive libido, and by the movie’s end he has learned a thing or two about devotion to friends and family.
In fact, much of “American Wedding” is devoted to Stifler growing from a man who behaves like an adolescent to a man who behaves, at least sometimes, like a man.
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“He is the last guy to really come of age,” said Herz.
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