Party Hard All Summer Long

When it was released in 1999, American Pie became a really solid hit for Universal. Made on only a budget of $11 Mil, the film went on to rake in a very cool $235.5 Mil during its run. That’s the kind of return on investment that no studio could ignore. In the current era of studio films, when everything has to be a blockbuster and nothing seems to get made for less than $100 Mil (to then, if it’s lucky, make $250 Mil after), that kind of money from such a tiny budget made American Pie an absolute powerhouse. Not just one of the most successful R-rated comedies ever, but just one of the most successful comedies, period.

Naturally, Universal fast-tracked a sequel for the film, looking to capitalize on the success of the first one to get a second out the door within two years. The team was reunited, another script was banged out, and all the stars were brought back. The film would follow the continuing adventures of its core group – Jason Biggs as Jim, Chris Klein as Oz, Thomas Ian Nicholas as Kevin, Eddie Kaye Thomas as Finch, along with Seann William Scott as Stifler – as their characters navigate further sexual pitfalls after their first year of college.

But while the studio desperately wanted a second film, the big question is if the story was actually there to support a sequel? Did we really need an American Pie 2? Sitting down and watching the sequel, I would say the answer is a mixed bag, at best. For many of these characters, there really isn’t much story to tell about them. The film pivots as best as it can to come up with some kind of storyline it can focus on, but when all of their “major” problems (i.e., can these virgins ever get laid) were solved by the end of film one, what is there really to say for film two?

Having just completed their first year of college, the four friends – Jim, Oz, Kevin, and Finch – head back home to reunite and enjoy a summer of partying at Stifler’s house. Except in the year since they’ve left the cops have really started to come down hard on high school parties. Most of the people that attend Stifler’s parties are still in high school, which means the cops won’t let these festivities occur. Without a cool place to regularly gather and rock out, what are these college kids supposed to do for 12 weeks?

The answer comes from Kevin’s older brother (who remains unnamed, but is played by Casey Affleck). When he was in college and had summers off, he and his buddies rented a cabin at Lake Michigan and hung out all year, throwing parties and having a blast. He tells Kevin to do the same, so Kevin gets a cabin, gets his friends on the road, and plans to spend the whole summer having a blast. But each of his buddies has an issue they need to resolve, and it’s unclear if they’re going to be able to have as much fun as they could this summer without pulling together and making it all work.

It would be charitable to say that, like the first film, this sequel has four main plotlines, one for each character. At best you could say that American Pie 2 has one A-plot and three B-plot, but the reality is that none of the stories in the film are really developed very well, and what we really have is a kind of breezy summer movie that meanders through skits and scenes before, eventually settling on some kind of throughline to carry it to the finish. That doesn’t make for a very strong set of stories, but it does mean the film can pursue whatever weird, comedic ideas it comes up with.

The primary story of the film concerns Jim, who from this film forward effectively becomes the lead character of the series. While still at home (before heading off to the lake), Jim gets a call from Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), who is studying abroad and will be in Michigan by the end of the Summer. She wants to meet up so they can, well, get freaky, and this causes Jim to spiral. Not know if he was a good lay, he gets back in touch with Michelle (Alyson Hannigan, who stole the show in the last film for her few very brief scenes, and goes on to be a major part of the main series going forward) to see if she can help him be a better lover. But, in the process of her helping him the two develop a real bond, and Jim has to decide, at the end of Summer, who he really wants to be with.

This is a decent storyline, in large part because it treats Michelle like a real person (instead of just as a nerd with a few funny lines) while also helping to push Jim forward in his life. At the same time, though, the film doesn’t spend nearly as much time on this storyline as it could. It goes from reintroducing Jim to Michelle to almost immediately her helping him to then, near the end of the film, a montage of her helping him before it rushes right into the storyline. The film does this because it’s trying to balance Jim with the other characters, although as we’ll see this is a losing proposition anyway, when it really should have spent more time getting this main thread, the love story, really cooking.

Focusing on the other characters as much doesn’t work because they have nowhere to go. Oz loves his girlfriend, Heather (Mena Suvari), and refuses to look at any other girls, even when she goes off to study for a semester abroad, and then the film proceeds to never test him or tempt him at all, leaving him stuck right where he was at the start of the film by the time it reaches its end. Finch is still pining for Stifler’s Mom (Jennifer Coolidge), who he slept with at the end of the first film, and his whole plan is to sleep with her again at the end of this film. And then there’s Kevin, who is still stuck on Vicky (Tara Reid) after she dumped him at the end of the first movie, and, without checking on him at all or doing much to develop him or her as characters, he gets over her by the time the credits roll. That is… really not much at all there.

When people remember this film it’s probably for a few specific scenes. One is Stifler getting peed on after acting like a misogynistic jerk. This part is amusing since watching Stifler get some kind of payback is always delightful. Another is the boys sneaking into the home of a couple of supposed lesbians, watching them as they change, getting caught, and then getting punished by them, which also feels good since it actually makes all the boys (Stifler included) suffer for bad decisions (something the first film never did). Sure, there’s a bit of gay panic humor here, but the film mostly makes this scene work.

And then, of course, there’s the biggest scene that was shown in trailers and on repeat in compilation clips: Jim super gluing his hand to his dick. This sequence is very funny, in large part because Jason Biggs is a solid, comedic actor and has the chops to pull something this silly off. But it also goes hard on the absurdity of it all, and plays up the laughs for good effect. It also leads to one of the few scenes in the film with Eugene Levy's Noah, Jim's dad, and, as with the first film, he always steals the scenes he’s in. It really cements what works about these films – Jim, Noah, and dumb, over-the-top sexual antics – while shifting aside everything that doesn’t.

American Pie 2 is a fun movie that does, at the very minimum, better dodge all the awful sexual issues that the first film had. It is uneven, though, and it shows that many of the characters in the film really have nowhere to go, story wise. Later films understand this, and refocus the characters in different ways, but American Pie 2 was clearly designed to be, a “this is the thing, do the thing again,” kind of film. The fact that it works at all shows there was life still in the franchise, they just couldn’t pull off this exact same kind of story again without audiences getting bored.