Hapless Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is in danger of losing his son, Nick (Jake Cherry). He’s not really concerned about his ex-wife, but Nick? That worries him. Especially when Nick mentions that he’s ready to hang up his hockey skates and start practicing to be a stockbroker, like his new dad, Don (Paul Rudd).
Spurred on by the thought of losing his son’s hockey career to the over-achieving Don – or at least to his utility belt of cell phones, Larry decides that he needs to get on with his life and do something. So begging for a job at the unemployment office, he begs for just about anything. What he gets is something that no one would have expected.
You see, Larry gets a job as a night watchman and the Museum of Natural History. And as they say, history has a way of coming to life. It’s never been more true than it is at this place after they lock the doors for the night.
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Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) is ready to treat the family to a completely new sort of vacation – in Las Vegas! Of course, if you know Clark, you know that he doesn’t always think things through, and though his plan this time around seems to be to spend time with his family (as always), he is sidetracked (as always) by the allure of making easy money at the gambling tables.
Naturally he is joined by his lovely wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), and they also bring along kids Audrey (Marisol Nichols) and Rusty (Ethan Embry). As with the prior films in the “series”, in this go-round where the kids are played by different actors than their predecessors.
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Just as Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) comes home to visit his wife, he is met by a few less-than-upstanding citizens who want to cause trouble. Unfortunately for them, Poe is an Army Ranger, which means that they probably aren’t in the best position when it comes to a fight.
So when they decide to ambush him outside the bar, Poe gets the best of them. But when all is said and done, and one of them ends up dead on the ground, it is Poe who gets the short end of the stick. All he was doing was protecting his wife, but since he is trained as a deadly weapon, he ends up in prison.
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Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) may be the best trial lawyer you ever meet. He’s never lost a case. So when he manages to win one where he just knows the guy is guilty, he attracts some unexpected attention.
He gets an invitation from a fancy New York City law firm to come up and visit, all expenses paid, to pick a jury. And what’s more is that he gets to bring his wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) along for the ride. It’s too good to be true.
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A local sheriff (Brendan Gleeson) pulls a diver out of Black Lake (they wanted to call it Lake Placid, but that name was already taken), only to find that he’s been bitten in half. What they find is a tooth, and this gets sent to a museum for analysis.
The tooth ends up in the hands of Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda), who doesn’t usually do field research, and most certainly not in Maine. But because her boss – and boyfriend – has decided to do a little extra-curricular activity of his own with her friend, she ends up in the backwoods. This may or may not be a good choice.
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The small African nation of Sierra Leone is situated next to Liberia, and while Liberia produces billions of dollars of diamonds annually, Sierra Leone produces virtually none. The reason for this, at least according to this movie, is that the diamonds within Sierra Leone are taken by rebel forces and then sold to fund their rebellion.
In the process, countless families are broken up, with the lucky ones killed off immediately, but many others left maimed, physically or emotionally (or in many cases both). The healthy men are used for mining these diamonds, while the youth can be taken to replenish the forces that are killed in the process of doing so. It’s not a pretty sight.
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The rumor says that if Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is going to kill you, she will whisper in your ear before you even know that she is there.
As the movie opens, we see that Elektra can indeed defeat an entire army of people who have been assigned the task of defending a single person. Naturally she gets past them without so much as breaking a sweat or even making it seem like a difficult task. But that is what she does.
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The fifth movie in the American Pie franchise sets several new bars.
First and foremost, it’s probably the worst in the bunch, though American Wedding really wasn’t very good either. At best, I’d have to say that they tied for last in this department.
Second, Mr. Levenstein (Eugene Levy) makes another cameo here, like he did in American Pie Presents Band Camp, but the ties to the original are getting weaker all along.
In fact, without that, Mr. Levenstein’s story about Jim and Michelle, a brief mention of “Great Falls” and the fact that the main character here (as well as in Band Camp) were named “Stifler”, there would be no tie at all to the original story. Not that that’s bad. Just a thought.
Just like in American Wedding and Band Camp, the language is ratcheted up a notch, but unlike in those two, it keeps going pretty much throughout here. To match it, there are also some reasonably gross scenes as well. I hope you’re ready.
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When Andy Farmer (Chevy Chase) receives a $10,000 advance from his publisher, he and his wife decide that it’s finally time to make the leap. They purchase a house in the country, and leave the city behind.
The first glimpse of their new home is a wonderful one. The town of Redbud, perhaps not, but then, we don’t really see much of it, as the Farmers appear to be on the outskirts of town. So much so, in fact, that their moving van can’t find them until the next day, and it means that they have to suffer through the first night without a change of clothes, without furniture, and without even anything to eat.
In retrospect, they should perhaps have taken this as a sign and moved back to the city.
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Matt Stifler (Tad Hilgenbrink) wants to be just like his big brother. This is, presumably, the same character played by Eli Marienthal in American Pie and American Pie 2 – that character was just named “Stifler’s Brother”.
In any case, he can’t get big brother Steve to give him the time of day. So he figures that what he can do is make enough noise to get him to notice him in other ways. He decides to sabotage the school band that’s getting ready to play during some sort of graduation ceremony.
Unfortunately, what happens is that not only does he ruin the ceremony, but he exposes himself to the entire crowd, and he gets himself in so much trouble that he gets sent to the one place that no Stifler should ever want to end up. In fact, it’s the one place that no one would want any Stifler to be. He gets sent to Band Camp.
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