Review: American Pie Reunion

The humour was crude but inventively crude and carefully balanced out by a softer touchy-feely side. For every 'urgh' there was an 'argh'.

So while you could never imagine Confessions: Reunion with a now married Robin Asquith, reflecting ruefully on his days of window cleaning and driving instructing, the idea of revisiting the Pie gang in later life as they come to terms with marriage and career has some validity beyond the cash-in.

The American Pie brand has been milked mercilessly with diminishing numbers of the original cast returning in two cinema sequels and then various straight-to-DVD efforts.

Throughout it all the only ever-present was Eugene Levy as Jim's dad and he's here again providing many of the best laughs.

The relative lack of success enjoyed by the cast means that everybody is back for this and doing a fair job of looking pleased to be so.

It relies heavily on the goodwill the audience has for these characters but it coasts along pleasantly enough and there are a number of genuinely funny moments.

The female members of the cast, though, are underused. Mena Suvavi and Tara Reid just get to stand around and

look pretty while even Alyson Hannigan, the most successful member of the cast, is given precious little to do.

It hovers in that grey area between tired retread and pleasing, nostalgic revisit and as Universal very generously plied the audience with pizza and cocktails before the screening (of which I had more than my fair share) I am shamelessly prepared to hitch my star rating to the latter.

AMERICAN PIE: REUNION (15)

Director: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Starring: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott, Chris Klein and Eddie Kaye Thomas

Length: 113 mins

***