American Pie 3: The Wedding

By the time you get to the third film of a trilogy like this you've probably already made up your mind.  If the first two American Pies had you rolling in the aisles then like as not this will as well. Very little has changed in the last of the series.  Whether or not you think this is good or bad depends entirely on if you liked the first two films.  If you did then you won't be disappointed. 

Of course it's entirely possible that you've not seen the first two in which case is this instalment worth seeing? The good news in this case is that the plot is so simple (and frankly unimportant) that you won't feel lost.  The other good news is that there are some very funny scenes. What makes the American Pie films in general and this instalment in particular is the chemistry between the stars.  Jason Biggs and Eugene Levy in particular have a pretty convincing father son relationship. This makes the recurring 'Dad walks in at the wrong time' joke in all its variations funny each time.  Levy's reactions lift a lot of the scenes from being stupid and crude to being stupid crude and funny.  In case you haven't guessed this isn't intellectual humour but it isn't trying to be.  At the end of the day people slipping on banana skins and getting pies in the face has always been funny and this film updates that kind of slapstick humour for an audience more difficult to shock.

At the end of the day if you are looking for a comedy that's stupid in all the right ways then you won't go far wrong with this film.  I could have done with less attempted seriousness towards the end but the 'funny' to 'not funny' ratio is still pleasingly high.  There is nothing hugely original here but original might not have equalled funny.  You will have seen every joke before either in an earlier film in the series or somewhere else but they are rehashed with vigour.  If the mark of a good comedy is making people laugh out loud in the cinema then it certainly worked for me.