Movie reviews: “American Pie 2”

Critics, for the most part, are saying “no thanks” to a second helping of American Pie. “Forced and predictable,” huffs Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News. “Calculated, cynical and, worse, not funny,” grouches Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Disingenuous and manipulative,” chimes in Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. “A limp biscuit of a movie,” scowls Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post. Several critics acknowledge that they found some scenes in the movie funny but go on to remark that those scenes generally brought to mind similar ones in the original. Elizabeth Barchas in the Boston Globe, for example, writes, “The sequel is so ridiculously raunchy it’s hard not to laugh at times, but the inherent problem in American Pie 2 is that there’s nothing especially new about it.” Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times likewise remarks that he “had a good time” watching the movie but then observes that “it’s about the same characters [as appeared in the original] and the elements of surprise and discovery are gone.” [One thing that also remains the same as the original is the R rating, and while most critics are predicting that the film is certain to be a big draw at the box office this weekend (it will “perform brilliantly,” Joe Morgenstern predicts in The Wall Street Journal), Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News isn’t buying their forecasts. The R rating, he notes, “is now being strictly enforced at theaters throughout the land. Studios have more or less agreed to stop promoting such fare directly to kids and younger teenagers.”]