American Wedding
Half of the gang from the first two films are back for another piece as Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) are about to be married. The prior antics of Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott) has gotten him excluded from the festivities, but manages to get in anyway through his supreme dancing skills and the promise of a bachelor party. And with that, planning gets underway, parents meet for the first time, and pre-wedding jitters start to set in. As a side story, Stifler and Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) fight for the hand of pretty Cadence (January Jones), Michelle's sister. Stifler tries so hard to impress her and her parents that he becomes a preppie while Finch obsessively tries to show Cadence the real Stifler. As for the wedding, obstacles from impressing the bride's parents to dead flowers hamper the days leading up to the wedding, but in the end, everything ends up happily ever after.

The first film struck the chord of pure comedy. The second strayed from this formula and turned to mostly gross-out jokes, seriously hampering the quality of the film. The third seems to combine the two with mixed results. When the movie wants to be funny, it's hilarious. But the gross-out skits that result have flimsy connections to the main story. I found no joy watching the dance-off since it seemed highly unnecessary. The bachelor party reaches a funny climax but takes too long to set up. These two scenes plus a couple of others (notably the dog poop) seem to take on a different tone than the rest of the film, making it a roller-coaster ride to watch. When it sticks to its two main plot points (the follies of planning a wedding and the courtship of Cadence), the movie excels. The characters are allowed to act the way we've seen them in the past without succumbing to pointless gross-out scenes, well, save for Stifler. (Funniest of them all is the deadpan comedy of Eugene Levy.) And that's how we like them. 2.5 stars