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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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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Family on December 30th, 2006 by Chad Everett
This sequel to the 2003 release takes us back to the Baker clan, but this time things have changed a bit. Tom Baker (Steve Martin) is presumably still at a small college, while wife Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt) has still only written the one book (according to comments in the movie) – yet they are still in the massive house in the city that they purchased, so you have to wonder how they make ends meet.
Nonetheless, life moves on, and the third eldest Baker, Lorraine (Hilary Duff) is graduating high school. This is a time of change for Tom, and change isn’t always good.
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Adventure on December 17th, 2006 by Chad Everett
The average person watches 7 hours of television per day. Roy Knable (the late John Ritter) must watch enough for two other people who don’t watch at all, at least according to his son, who narrates this for us to open the movie.
Roy’s wife Helen (Pam Dawber) would probably agree. She feels like she doesn’t even see Roy any more. So one night while she’s trying to talk to him, she throws something into the TV. This doesn’t even deter Roy – he just puts another one (albeit a smaller one) on top. Then the real trouble starts.
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Family on July 29th, 2006 by Chad Everett
In this latest offering from Dreamworks Animation, they’re making quite an effort at stealing the thunder from Pixar. Actually, they probably couldn’t do quite as good a job if Pixar’s latest effort (the less-than-stellar Cars) wasn’t as poor an outing. Nonetheless, this is quite good.
This is the tale of RJ (voiced by Bruce Willis), a scavenging raccoon who decides to raid a bear’s stash and ends up waking him up in the process. The bear doesn’t like this too much, and the food gets smashed by a truck, so RJ ends up having to replace all the food – in less than week – so he runs to the only source available: The tract homes springing up nearby, and the animals that are being displaced and have just woken up from their own hibernation to help him get the job done.
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Comedy on June 28th, 2006 by Chad Everett
Steve Martin is back as George Banks, and if it wasn’t bad enough that his daughter is grown up and taken away from him, now it turns out that she is pregnant and wanting to move away when the baby is born. So he puts the house up for sale – he is moving to the beach.
In a classic bit, the house sells way too quickly (the buyer is Eugene Levy in a small but funny role), but before he knows it his own wife is pregnant and he needs that space. So the buyer offers to sell it back, but only for a profit of one hundred thousand dollars. Not bad for a day’s work.
Not wanting to see his house be torn down (and also to get back in his wife’s good graces), George relents, and buys the house back. He also builds a baby suite and caters to both his wife and daughter for the next nine months.
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Comedy on April 2nd, 2006 by Chad Everett
This is probably my least favorite movie of the series, but it’s growing on me. Probably because I’ve caught bits and pieces of it this weekend on some station or another (USA, I think), and those bits and pieces remind me of the parts of the series I like, without force-feeding me the whole thing, which reminds me why I don’t like the whole thing.
In this third go-round, Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) are, as you may imagine by the title, getting married. As you may also surmise, simply because you’ve been paying attention previously, things probably aren’t going to go quite as expected along the way, and you’d be right, even if you hadn’t seen a single preview of the actual movie.
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