Extras:
Enter the Dominatrix: Inside the Bachelor Party, Stifler Speak, Grooming the
Groom, Deleted scenes, Outtakes, Cheesy Wedding Video, Nikki's Hollywood Video,
Audio commentaries
Director:
Jesse Dylan
(American Pie: The Wedding, How High)
Producers:
Chris Bender, Adam Herz, Warren Zide, Craig Perry and Chris Moore
Screenplay:
Adam Herz
Music:
Christophe Beck
Cast:
Jim: Jason Biggs
Stiffler: Seann William Scott
Michelle: Alyson Hannigan
Finch: Eddie Kaye Thomas
Kevin: Thomas Ian Nicholas
Cadence Flaherty: January Jones
Jim's Dad: Eugene Levy
Jim's Mom: Molly Cheek
Mary Flaherty: Deborah Rush
Harold Flaherty: Fred Willard
Grandma: Angela Paton
Bear: Eric Allan Kramer
Fraulein Brandi: Amanda Swisten
Officer Krystal: Nikki Schieler Ziering
Head Coach: Lawrence Pressman
Stifler's Mom: Jennifer Coolidge
The happy couple...
American Pie: The Wedding
focuses on.. a wedding between the two characters that got it together at the
end of the
lacklustre second film,
which had a few moments but wasn't as consistent as the
original.
As this third one began I had my reservations with a blowjob scene in a
restaurant as it didn't quite ring true at first, but it soon slipped back
into the style we were accustomed to at the start of the trilogy. However,
while there are a few more classic scenes than there were in No.2 (probably
about double the three that one had), it still has an awful lot of padding and
the wedding itself, between Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson
Hannigan) is just a device to create an extra 'piece of pie' for
want of a better way to say 'third film' again, with the 'pie' becoming
a cake, in a scene just before the wedding.
The basic plot, such that it is, is that Stifler (Seann William Scott)
can only come to the wedding and plan the bachelor party if he helps Jim
learn how to dance so he can give Michelle the wedding of her dreams. You
wouldn't have thought it, but Stifler was forced by his mother to do three
years of dance class and now it's going to pay off.
It has to be said that at first, there is a great great bachelor party with
two naked dominatrices (Amanda Swisten and Nikki Schieler Ziering)
but once some uninivited guests turn up things fall
a little flat for a while. Elsewhere, and for the better, both Finch (Eddie
Kaye Thomas) and Stifler are vying to get Michelle's sister Cadence (January
Jones) in the sack, and Stifler also gets way out of his depth in a gay
bar, going for a gay dance-off with one of the regulars, to the tunes of Michael
Sembello's Maniac and Belinda Carlisle's Heaven is a Place on Earth.
Stifler also has an accident with the ring... Yes, there's a lot of Stiffler
here, even compared to Jim who's not in it so much albeit enough to get the
point of the wedding across.
I also have to add that there's the unexplained disapperance of some characters
from the first two films, namely Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), Oz (Chris
Klein), Jessica (Natasha Lyonne), Vicky (Tara Reid) and
Heather (Mena Suvari).
...while Stiffler meets more than a mere MILF!
The picture is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen ratio with a
slight stuttery appearance at time, which can be distracting. It's not often
you get a comedy that's presented in such a wide ratio, particularly since
the first two were both in 1.85:1 and this is the kind of movie which lends
itself mainly to home viewings. Since it was shot in Super 35, it's possible
that a suitable 16:9 print can be struck from the negative when it gets shown
endlessly on TV in years to come.
Sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1 only. The sequel had a DTS 5.1 option, but then
this series has, sonically, focussed mainly on pop tunes that denote the teenage
youth such as Foo Fighters, Feeder, Sugababes, Groove Armada and even
a snatch of Badly Drawn Boy. Sadly, there's also a dreadfully anodyne
cover of James' Laid by Matt Nathanson, which is also
used as the theme tune!
The original DVD, the sequel and the boxset.
Let me get one thing straight before moving on to the extras. What I don't
like about a DVD, and a number of them do it, is those which, when left on a
menu, without further intervention go back to the main menu or even start a
film. Until I press something, I don't want the DVD to move - particularly
when I've left it for a minute and it's getting late and then it starts blaring
out. Why do DVD companies do this?!
Rant over. The extras are as follows:
Delete and extended scenes (22 mins):
12 of them, mostly introduced by writer/producer Adam Herz, and all just
dragging scenes out even longer so you can see why they were cut. All the
footage is in 2.35:1 letterbox.
Outttakes (6 mins):
Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Stifler Speak (7 mins):
The most popular character and the weird way he talks, in pairing innocent
words with rude ones.
Enter the Dominatrix: Inside the Bachelor Party (10 mins):
Nikki (Schieler) Ziering goes behind the scenes for this particular scene,
including interview snippets and a brainstorming session on how to go about it.
Grooming the Groom (6½ mins):
Without giving anything away, this is what led up to the scene involving a
cake instead of a pie.
Cheesy Wedding Video (3 mins):
For those who wanted to see the romance without the comedy.
Nikki's Hollywood Video (10 mins):
More behind-the-scenes footage with the plastic-breasted blonde.
Audio commentaries:
One from director Jesse Dylan and Seann William Scott, with the second from
Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Eddie Kaye Thomas and Thomas Ian Nicholas.
So, some reasonable extras but all ones you'll only watch once. Hence, if,
like me, you were disappointed with the sequel and want to see how things
pan out in the finale, this would be just worth a rental only.
Subtitles are in English only, there are 28 chapters and the menu features
clips from the film with that awful cover of Laid, which replays the
same bit a few times over before starting the film again whether you wanted
it to or not.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
