Thirteen years after American Pie, the adolescents from the worldwide hit movie are back for a fourth helping, still tempted by the juicy bits despite having grown up, somewhat, in the meantime.
For the actors too it was a nostalgic film... Since the last movie in 2003 they’ve followed their own paths, careers, they’ve become adults, some of them have married and had children
Released in 1999, the original was the latest to tap into US movie-goers’ huge appetite for adult-rated comedies, harking back to 1978’s Animal House and more recently demonstrated, arguably, by the Hangover films.
Famous for a scene in which Jason Biggs pleasured himself with an apple pie, the movie and its two sequels went on to make more than €535 million at the box office around the world.
Universal, makers of the franchise, then made a series of direct-to-video follow-ups, but have decided to come back to regular theatre distribution with American Reunion, which opened with a strong $21.5 million (€16.4 million) on its release in the US this weekend.
And while the actors remain mostly the same, the studio chose new film-makers in co-directors Jon Hurvitz and Hayden Schlossberg, whose previous credits include the Harold and Kumar comedies.
The pair insists that taking over an already-huge franchise wasn’t a problem.
“We were just enormous fans of the first American Pie.
“We were in college when it came out, we watched it over and over and over again, we knew the characters, we knew the franchise very well,” said Mr Hurvitz.
The original movie’s characters were adolescents and the decision to bring them back together for a high school reunion seemed the obvious storyline.
“The reunion concept was just so perfect for us to take everybody in this large ensemble and give each person a storyline and moments to shine,” said Mr Hurvitz, presenting the film recently in Beverly Hills, before its release.
Each of the characters has grown up, personally professionally, but the reunion throws them up against their adolescent emotions and lots of the laughs come from that confrontation.
“For the actors too it was a nostalgic film,” said Dania Ramirez, who plays Selena. “Since the last movie in 2003 they’ve followed their own paths, careers, they’ve become adults, some of them have married and had children”.
“They got back together for the film after several years of not seeing each other, for some of them.”
The Dominican Republic-born actress is the only new character in the movie, bringing a Hispanic touch to the franchise which wasn’t there before.
“That says something about what Latinos represent in this country. It’s become very important for Hollywood to include more Hispanic characters in films since Latinos are the most avid movie-goers in America,” she said.
This type of movie, which was perhaps relatively rare when the original American Pie was served up, is increasingly common − Bridesmaids and the Hangover films are recent examples.
The makers of American Reunion say they hope their movie doesn’t go too far into the excesses of the genre, even if it has its fair share of dirty jokes, full-frontal nudity and scatological references.
“Every single comedy director faces that question of ‘Are you going to push it?’ But I think that bad movies are trying to push it. You feel that they just try to find something outrageous,” said Mr Schlossberg.
“But for us, the most important is to have great characters.”