Overall Rating
  Awesome: 18.1%
Worth A Look: 58.1%
Average: 4.76%
Pretty Bad: 0.95%
Total Crap: 18.1%
7 reviews, 63 user ratings
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| American Wedding |
by Chris Parry
"I've been had! People told me this didn't suck! Bastards!"
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I'm generally down with the whole teen sex comedy genre, as a rule. I like boobies as much as the next guy, and stupid humor can be very filling when you have the right appetite going, but I have to say I've never been so disappointed by a highly recommended film than I was watching this mess. Everything stank, from the acting to the editing to the music to the writing. Throw Matthew Perry in the thing and every critic on the planet would have despised this movie, but I guess enough folks still have a soft spot for Stiffler and a hard spot for Band Camp to get American Wedding over the line.Is a description of storyline even necessary at this point? Jim (Jason Biggs), who is still constantly nervy, is getting married to Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), who is still constantly sexually aroused, while Jim's dad (Eugene Levy) is still constantly saying, "oh dear," and Stiffler is constantly eating dog poop and humping things.
Clearly Orson Welles was a pussy.
There's just nothing here at all worth recommending. Directed by Bob Dylan's son (I'll not honor him by saying his first name, because on the talent shown here he deserves little more than a lifetime of being called "son of Bob"), every scene is punctuated (or should I say pounded) by loud rock music. And by loud, I mean LOUD. It's as if someone is sitting behind you in the theater with a boombox, playing Avril Lavigne as two characters on screen walk quietly through the park.
Want proof? There are 39 pieces of music credited in this 93-minute film, which means there's a new song playing every 2 minutes and 18 seconds. Think about that now - if each song plays for one minute, that's barely a 1:18 gap between each track. MY EARS!
Then there's Alyson Hannigan, proving the old rule that there's nothing more tragic than a 30-year-old woman to pass as a teenager. She tries valiantly to make the old geeky gal shtick work, but it just seems wrong. Possibly because the writer of this monstrosity, regular Pie scribe Adam Herz, has only ever written one true female character - hers - amid dozens and dozens of dumb chicks and sex objects.
And then there's Stiffler. Man, this routine is getting old real fast. Is it a spoiler to say he eats a poodle stool? Probably not, this being Stiffler and all. But while his character was understandable and even empathetic when he was a dumb teenager (or at least playing one), now it just seems forced, ignorant, and entirely not believable. I didn't laugh at Stiffler once this time around, and the first couple of times he filled this role I at least snickered guiltily.
Directing a feature film is really hard and, though I'm sure everyone involved in American Wedding had a really good time, that doesn't generally mean they did a really good job. Plot-wise, there's nothing here beyond "let's hope Stiffler doesn't mess up the wedding...", which really is a sub-plot dressed as an actual storyline.
But if this were all funny, you could possibly forgive all the incompetent aspects of the production and just contentedly go along for a big, dumb ride. Unfortunately, the jokes are the kind that would leave fourteen-year-old boys laughing - and nobody else .Extremely forgettable, totally non-recommendable, and quite frankly a waste of time and money. Let the good times end here, so everyone involved can get on with playing grown-up roles.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7858&reviewer=1
originally posted: 04/24/04 15:33:54
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USA
01-Aug-2003 (R)
DVD: 02-Jan-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
07-Aug-2003
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