By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * *)
The director's father famously warned, almost 40 years ago, "Don't criticise what you don't understand," and I'm the first to admit that I've never cottoned on to the runaway popularity of the American Pie series, with its roots in the coming-of-age rites of American
college boys.
But, like the director's dad, I'm almost a lone voice: the three blockbusters have brought new meaning to the phrase "gross national productions."
After the less-than-roaring success of his first flick, the 2001 dope comedy How High, Jesse Dylan takes over behind the cameras of what amounts to a slimmed-down American Pie 3 (Michelle is the only surviving female, Oz and Sherman are among the male casualties). The characters and the situations they're ... er, exposed to, will be familiar to fans. It's just that there is a little less of each.
Michelle Flaherty (Alyson Hannigan) and Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) have survived the embarrassments and scandals of the first two movies and still want to get married.
As this instalment opens, Jim's dad (Eugene Levy) is rushing to a restaurant with the engagement ring that his son has forgotten. When he gets there he will not notice that his about-to-be daughter-in-law is under the table.
The story is like, kind of, about Jim's determination to learn to dance before his wedding, his best mate Stifler (Seann William Scott) and his infatuation with Michelle's goody-two-shoes sister, Cadence (January Jones), and the wedding party trying to keep Stifler from turning up to and wrecking the nuptials.
So far, so funny. It's the gross-out bits that irritate: why does a good set-up need Stifler to eat dog excrement? Pubic hair on the wedding cake? Sexual encounters with dogs and an elderly grandmother? Homophobia to the max?And this from the nation that proposes to tell us when we can queue for the toilet on planes? Maybe it's because they're already in it.
