A third of the way into American Reunion, the latest in the American Pie franchise coming nearly ten years after its last installment (straight-to-video movies not withstanding), I was hit with a revelation.
I was morbidly depressed.
First off, I had no idea it had been almost a decade since American Wedding, the third movie in the franchise. I could have sworn it came out in 2005 or 2006. It seems the first sign of getting older is that everything seems like it happened much more recently than it actually has. No wonder the movie didn't tear it up at the box office. The target audience would be young guys in their twenties, and those guys were probably eight or nine when the franchise first began.
Then again, I guess they would be the major demographic for this movie. That honor would fall to my peer group: The "We Miss the 90's" Generation.
Many people have taken advantage of my age group's love affair with nostalgia.
Teen Nick recently had a huge success by airing old sitcoms and cartoons from the 90's. Broadway's hottest show is Newsies, a cinematic flop, but a cult fave for any theater kid who's old enough to remember when it came out. And let's not forget that TV shows from that decade are being remade on a daily basis (90210, Melrose Place, etc.) to varying degrees of success.
So where does American Wedding fail where others have succeeded?
For that answer, we need to look to Die Hard 4. Sorry, I mean Live Free or Die Hard (I can barely type that without laughing).
Mock it all you want, and goodness knows, I could, but the fact is, that movie perfectly executed the return of a long-dead franchise.
And how?
They didn't wallow in their nostalgia.
It's sort of like a deer in the forest. If you call too much attention to it, you risk it running away, thereby ruining your experience. Nostalgia is the same way.
LFODH didn't spend an exorbitant amount of time bringing up how great the stuff that happened in the previous three movies were.
As soon as a character in a movie references how great the other movies were, you just know you're in for a sapfest instead of whatever it is you actually came for.
Before 90210 smartened up, every episode used to feature Jennie Garth and Shannon Doherty reminding people how great the original show was. "Remember when..." It was as if they thought they could drive ratings up by reminding people how great the ratings used to be.
It doesn't work that way.
American Reunion, however, is one of the worst offenders I've seen in awhile. The only character in the movie who has remained even mildly entertaining is Sean William Scotts' Stifler, and that's because he (gratefully) hasn't changed at all. So what do the other characters do?
Berate him for it.
"We're not in high school anymore," Jason Biggs' Jim yells towards the end of the movie.
I wanted to yell back--"No kidding! Back then you were fun!"
I found myself actually identifying with Stifler's frustration with his friends for having turned into lameass married people.
Why exactly would I want to pay money to see a movie in a franchise that was all about sex...not have sex? (Sex and the City, you need to be listening to this as well.)
Any franchise, to survive, has to honor its theme and progress upon it. I'm sure Sarah Jessica Parker loves that Sex and the City became about friendship and feminism and characters finding the right man, but the rest of us just wanted to see Kim Cattrall have sex in funny places with hot guys.
That's what we paid for.
Now, if you can find a way to deliver on that and move your characters' respective stories forward, all the better. But first honor your theme.
(That should be a franchise commandment.)
There's also this urge to comment on the current generation and how their culture sucks. (See Scream 4's "Don't mess with the original" or American Reunion's "Don't mess with the Class of '99.")
Both these movies feature old people beating youngsters to prove they're still cool.
Yeah, because that's going to help sell your movie to the up-and-coming demographic.
Why don't you just make a movie that breaks new ground--like the first movie did?
Do you have any idea how much of today's culture owes itself to American Pie?
Michael Cera is just a modern-day Jason Biggs. Ditto to Megan Fox and Tara Reid.
People forget that when the Pie movies were at the height of their popularity, at least one of those actors were in every movie that dealt with anyone under the age of thirty.
Watching the movie, I actually wanted to go online and write to any young kid who might not have seen the first three, with an apology:
"I have no idea why we thought these people could act."
And yet, the lackluster way they decided to bring everyone back seemed like such an affront to me.
Shannon Elizabeth and Natasha Lyonne were in the movie for less than five minutes--combined.
It was as if the writers were going down a checklist--
Touch upon this character.
Touch upon that character.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Why not make the raunchiest, dirtiest, most outrageous movie possible and say--"There! That's how it's done!" Yes, it's true that movies have definitely built upon what the Pie movies founded, but if you go back and watch that first film, it's still pretty insane.
And very, very funny.
This latest film is a shell of that movie. It's not that they're trying and fail to bring back the past. It's that it doesn't seem like they're trying at all.
It's downright...sad.
Which brings me back to Bruce Willis--
Live Free or Die Hard didn't have his character, John McClane getting soft or emotional or sentimental. At no point during that movie does he say to Justin Long's character "You know one time I..." or even bring up one of his previous adventures. If you didn't know any better, you'd think the fourth movie was the first, and when you're talking about rejuvenating a franchise or bringing in a new audience, that's a very big compliment.
As far as making fans of the previous films happy, you don't need to constantly bombard us with nostalgia. Just make a good movie.
Please.
Oh, and throw us a "Yipee-ki-yay motherf**ker" or a kid boning a pie every once in awhile.
That'll do.
I was morbidly depressed.
First off, I had no idea it had been almost a decade since American Wedding, the third movie in the franchise. I could have sworn it came out in 2005 or 2006. It seems the first sign of getting older is that everything seems like it happened much more recently than it actually has. No wonder the movie didn't tear it up at the box office. The target audience would be young guys in their twenties, and those guys were probably eight or nine when the franchise first began.
Then again, I guess they would be the major demographic for this movie. That honor would fall to my peer group: The "We Miss the 90's" Generation.
Many people have taken advantage of my age group's love affair with nostalgia.
Teen Nick recently had a huge success by airing old sitcoms and cartoons from the 90's. Broadway's hottest show is Newsies, a cinematic flop, but a cult fave for any theater kid who's old enough to remember when it came out. And let's not forget that TV shows from that decade are being remade on a daily basis (90210, Melrose Place, etc.) to varying degrees of success.
So where does American Wedding fail where others have succeeded?
For that answer, we need to look to Die Hard 4. Sorry, I mean Live Free or Die Hard (I can barely type that without laughing).
Mock it all you want, and goodness knows, I could, but the fact is, that movie perfectly executed the return of a long-dead franchise.
And how?
They didn't wallow in their nostalgia.
It's sort of like a deer in the forest. If you call too much attention to it, you risk it running away, thereby ruining your experience. Nostalgia is the same way.
LFODH didn't spend an exorbitant amount of time bringing up how great the stuff that happened in the previous three movies were.
As soon as a character in a movie references how great the other movies were, you just know you're in for a sapfest instead of whatever it is you actually came for.
Before 90210 smartened up, every episode used to feature Jennie Garth and Shannon Doherty reminding people how great the original show was. "Remember when..." It was as if they thought they could drive ratings up by reminding people how great the ratings used to be.
It doesn't work that way.
American Reunion, however, is one of the worst offenders I've seen in awhile. The only character in the movie who has remained even mildly entertaining is Sean William Scotts' Stifler, and that's because he (gratefully) hasn't changed at all. So what do the other characters do?
Berate him for it.
"We're not in high school anymore," Jason Biggs' Jim yells towards the end of the movie.
I wanted to yell back--"No kidding! Back then you were fun!"
I found myself actually identifying with Stifler's frustration with his friends for having turned into lameass married people.
Why exactly would I want to pay money to see a movie in a franchise that was all about sex...not have sex? (Sex and the City, you need to be listening to this as well.)
Any franchise, to survive, has to honor its theme and progress upon it. I'm sure Sarah Jessica Parker loves that Sex and the City became about friendship and feminism and characters finding the right man, but the rest of us just wanted to see Kim Cattrall have sex in funny places with hot guys.
That's what we paid for.
Now, if you can find a way to deliver on that and move your characters' respective stories forward, all the better. But first honor your theme.
(That should be a franchise commandment.)
There's also this urge to comment on the current generation and how their culture sucks. (See Scream 4's "Don't mess with the original" or American Reunion's "Don't mess with the Class of '99.")
Both these movies feature old people beating youngsters to prove they're still cool.
Yeah, because that's going to help sell your movie to the up-and-coming demographic.
Why don't you just make a movie that breaks new ground--like the first movie did?
Do you have any idea how much of today's culture owes itself to American Pie?
Michael Cera is just a modern-day Jason Biggs. Ditto to Megan Fox and Tara Reid.
People forget that when the Pie movies were at the height of their popularity, at least one of those actors were in every movie that dealt with anyone under the age of thirty.
Watching the movie, I actually wanted to go online and write to any young kid who might not have seen the first three, with an apology:
"I have no idea why we thought these people could act."
And yet, the lackluster way they decided to bring everyone back seemed like such an affront to me.
Shannon Elizabeth and Natasha Lyonne were in the movie for less than five minutes--combined.
It was as if the writers were going down a checklist--
Touch upon this character.
Touch upon that character.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Why not make the raunchiest, dirtiest, most outrageous movie possible and say--"There! That's how it's done!" Yes, it's true that movies have definitely built upon what the Pie movies founded, but if you go back and watch that first film, it's still pretty insane.
And very, very funny.
This latest film is a shell of that movie. It's not that they're trying and fail to bring back the past. It's that it doesn't seem like they're trying at all.
It's downright...sad.
Which brings me back to Bruce Willis--
Live Free or Die Hard didn't have his character, John McClane getting soft or emotional or sentimental. At no point during that movie does he say to Justin Long's character "You know one time I..." or even bring up one of his previous adventures. If you didn't know any better, you'd think the fourth movie was the first, and when you're talking about rejuvenating a franchise or bringing in a new audience, that's a very big compliment.
As far as making fans of the previous films happy, you don't need to constantly bombard us with nostalgia. Just make a good movie.
Please.
Oh, and throw us a "Yipee-ki-yay motherf**ker" or a kid boning a pie every once in awhile.
That'll do.
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