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78Of course, if you loathed the first film, this one probably won't do much to change your mind. But fans, and I count myself among them, of the Weitz brothers' unexpectedly enjoyable original will find themselves in a familiar and perhaps comforting place … filthy language, risqué situations, die-hard friendships, and all.
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75American Reunion has a sense of deja vu, but it still delivers a lot of nice laughs.
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75American Reunion is about the comedy of middle-class men who can't be satisfied with sex until it looks like porn.
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70The picture is devilishly entertaining, not least because it's laced with just the sort of dumb raunchy jokes you hate yourself for laughing at. But it also preserves, to a degree, the elemental sweetness that made the original so distinctive.
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70The result is the best slice of Pie yet: a savvy sequel that's flat-out hilarious raunchy fun.
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70Taken altogether, the Pie movies offer a cohesive worldview, showing each of life's stages as the setting for fresh-yet-familiar catastrophes, relieved by a belief in sex, however ridiculous it might look, as a restorative force.
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63The laughs that do achieve liftoff are killer. But the real kick is seeing the old gang back and ready to party.
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63In some ways, American Reunion is the Charlize Theron indie "Young Adult" all over again: In both, a small-town high school reunion is the setting for a lot of nostalgia and narcissism and nasty behavior.
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63There's some laughing gas left in the cupboard, but this series may require an infusion of new blood to last until "American Funeral."
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60Warning: contains Jason Biggs' wang and the contents of Stifler's bowels. Happily, the fourth, funny, (possibly) final serving of American Pie is also warm and nostalgic enough to satisfy.
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60Guys and gals from the first film, now thicker and with incipient crow lines, pair up in more or less the same permutations as when they were young and shiny. The movie's message is that the way to face impeding maturity is to embrace your inner teen idiot.
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60American Reunion depends more on the audience's feelings for recognizable characters than telling an original story, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
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60The wild card in all this remains Seann William Scott's Steve Stifler, the rampaging id whose indignation at his peers' maturity provides most of the film's real laughs.
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60Call it a strange and unintended benefit, then, that many of these generic characters work better as awkward adults than as teens.
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50Writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are content to trot out the familiar gags and characters, and the murmurs of recognition I heard in the preview audience indicate that the series has become some kind of sad generational touchstone.
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50This is a joyless experience made all the sadder because most viewers still remember the naughty delights delivered by "American Pie."
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50Harmless if not exactly inspired, and rarely hilarious.
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50Halfway through, everyone starts drinking heavily and the film turns into agreeably sloppy fun. (Isn't that always the way – class reunions often perk up when someone spikes the punch.)
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50An immature obsession with sex at 17 seems understandable. But at 30 it's getting cringe-inducing.
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50Now and then the movie rouses itself to deliver. If you go to American Reunion - and many will, if they harbor fond memories of the first one, and if they can find a sitter - you should stay through the end credits.
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50The actors, many of them now in their mid-30s, look understandably fuller in the face and thicker around the waist. The jokes, too, are starting to show their age: They wobble.
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50The film alternates sloppily executed sex gags with sentiment, as did its predecessors. And it's all just slightly more endearing and amusing than it has any right to be.
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50The movie's only constant pleasure - heck, the whole franchise's - is Eugene Levy as Jim's dad, widowed and wondering if it's time to date again.
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50Funnier than its prior two predecessors, if gratingly awash in demographic-pandering late-'90s alt-rock hits ("Closing Time," "Freshman"), American Reunion flounders with its earnest melodrama.
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40Inevitably, the guys wind up sentimentally telling each other they should do this every year. Please no.
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40The first couple of servings back in the day were fresh and fruity, but the franchise has been left on the shelf a little too long. It's occasionally entertaining to have these characters back in our lives, but for the most part this fails to party like it's 1999.
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40What keeps the movie afloat, though, is Seann William Scott as Steve Stifler.
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40Remember "American Pie"? If you do, this movie is redundant and sad. If you don't, it's irrelevant.
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40While it's poignant seeing the whole gang again, the tired gross-out antics and limp romantic reprisals keep this hapless if heartfelt effort from qualifying as a decent comedy, let alone a generational classic.
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38An aggressively crass - and not especially funny - trip down memory lane, an attempt to recapture the sweetly ribald magic of the earlier film. As anyone who's ever attended a class reunion can tell you, it almost never works.
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38The directors don't know how to make this new plot funny or infectious. Most promises of comedic pleasure go as unfulfilled Stifler's T-shirt. This movie hasn't a clue where to begin the donation process.
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25American Reunion isn't a total wash. Its one saving grace is Eugene Levy as Jim's dad.
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20In the half-baked American Reunion, though, they might have accomplished what no previous chapter has: They might have just killed it.
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8Scenes will wander from gross-out gag to sentimental schmaltz to pervy leer to cheap nostalgia within a 30-second span, utterly free of clear directorial guidance. Even worse, very little of it is remotely funny.