American Reunion: Critic Reviews

If you liked the first film, then seeing these characters over a decade later, involved in the same silly set-ups will be pretty entertaining.

As it turns out, the recipe has been updated, and what once seemed like fatally warmed-over Pie tastes new again.

It has some good moments, but it goes on too long, and not enough happens that is likely to create new memories.

There are a few gags. But inevitably, the guys wind up sentimentally telling each other they should do this every year. Please no.

A strained, relentless quest for gross-out humor and outlandish sexual escapades.

An aggressively crass - and not especially funny - trip down memory lane, an attempt to recapture the sweetly ribald magic of the earlier film.

Just to be clear: 13 is how many years have passed since the first film. It's also a number that's such bad news that elevators skip it all together.

Taken 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.

Doesn't provide the generational high producers thought it would; this isn't exactly the cast of "American Graffiti."

Yes, American Reunion is a juvenile outing. They steal jet skis and defecate in beer coolers. They cheat on their girlfriends and lie to their best friends. But what did you expect?

It's got some pretty good jokes, too. OK, maybe they aren't that good, but they're performed with excellent timing.

"American Reunion" has a sense of deja vu, but it still delivers a lot of nice laughs.

Every other line, it seems, refers to "back in the day" or "wasn't this more fun when we were younger?" or how "old" they're feeling. You'd think this was a remake of "Cocoon."

It's a reunion that finds the old friends grappling with new dilemmas.

Rare is the movie that brings "American Pie" to mind and suffers by comparison, but here we have one.

"Reunion" should be the last slice of "Pie," America.

It's sort of like visiting your hometown and running into that kid you kind of, sort of knew in high school. You weren't asking for an update, but it's pleasant enough to get one.

While 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.

Overall, the level of wit and invention from writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg is well below their scripts for the three "Harold and Kumar" movies.

American Reunion, remarkably, might just be the funniest issue yet from the American Pie franchise factory.

Confirms the perception that only losers attend high-school reunions.

American Reunion tries to use nudity, sex, and fecal matter to generate laughter, but the jokes are tired and predictable.

Being pantsless in the kitchen isn't quite as endearing for a thirtysomething dad, and kicking the joke up a notch with frontal nudity -- updating it for the Apatow age -- just emphasizes how old this franchise is.

"American Reunion" relies on cliches about nostalgia, forced tension over strained friendships and melodrama about the rekindling of first loves.

The movie's message is that the way to face impeding maturity is to embrace your inner teen idiot.