Flak Magazine: American Wedding, 08-07-03

The best teen movies are pop songs — ballads about crossing the threshold of maturity. It's why John Hughes invokes the Stray Cats, the Thompson Twins, Wang Chung, Oingo Boingo and, of course, Simple Minds. It also explains the appeal of the original American Pie, in which some best buds made a pact to confirm their manhood by prom night, and forged ahead like a platoon going into battle.

Directors Chris and Paul Weitz, working from a script by Adam Herz, understood that American glory days are bred in the friendships of youth. In movies, high school's battles are fought in the trenches between comic and tragic, marked only by the degrees in which mere awkwardness becomes humiliation. Those moments in such Hughes films as Pretty in Pink are deeply rooted in character; American Pie lacked that character detail, and so its awkward/humiliating scenarios are cynically propelled by Farrelly-inspired scatology. And so where Hughes's movies are odes to youth, like the five-part harmony of The Breakfast Club, American Pie lacks even the narrative consistency of its namesake Don McLean song (no small task) — it's a jam session that never quite comes together. To conclude the trilogy with suitable pathos, American Wedding really needs someone who understands that the tragicomedy of adolescence isn't found in penetrated pies or semen-filled cups of keg beer, but in the stumbling enlightenment that sex isn't love. In other words, American Wedding needs somebody to craft it into a pop song.

It's encouraging, then, that American Wedding is directed by Jesse Dylan, son of Bob and brother of Jakob. To Dylan's credit, there's a real tenderness in the recovery from the wedding's various tragedies because he is sensitive to the audience's affection for the characters — namely, Jim (Jason Biggs), his flutist bride Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), longtime cohorts Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Stifler (Seann William Scott) and Jim's dad (Eugene Levy).

Ultimately, though, Dylan is too interested in impressing the pie-fucking crowd. The story just stops for the scatology and shock jokes, as does all emotional and narrative logic: How come no one smells the dog shit Stifler eats? How could he have mistaken a 70-year-old woman's pie for January Jones'? If Michelle's parents are such prigs, why do they forgive Stifler so easily for bringing strippers into the house? And comedic opportunities are lost: If you've got Fred Willard getting spanked by strippers, why not let him indulge his Dirty Old Man within? Had Dylan trusted his fantastic cast (including A Mighty Wind folkies Willard, Levy and Jennifer Coolidge) and let the gags roll from their understanding of the characters, he might have pulled off a comedic hoedown worthy of Christopher Guest.

For the teen movie to achieve the emotional pull of a good pop song, it needs a vulnerable anti-hero at its center. This is why the Weitz brothers should have returned to direct: Their most recent effort was the surprisingly successful adaptation of Nick Hornby's About a Boy, where they proved adept at peeling back the shallow psyche of the Maxim man to expose the juvenile underneath. The humor of that film revolved around the vanity of Hugh Grant's spoiled trust-funder, Will Freeman, as seen in his faux-earnest stories before a klatch of single mothers or his counseling of his charge Marcus on the finer aspects of getting your hair "carefully disheveled." About a Boy didn't resort to scat gags, yet still managed some crotch humor: When Will and Marcus discussed the difference between a "girlfriend and a girl who is your friend" in front of a monkey cage, the Weitzes carefully captured some oversized baboon genitalia in the frame. That subtle gag evolved directly from the characters and the narrative, which is the opposite of having your story completely switch tracks to set up some far-fetched masturbation scenario.

American Wedding is also about a boy, and that boy is Stephen Stifler — Will Freeman in football pads. Not surprisingly, Wedding would have benefitted from About a Boy's more mature approach to humor, and the brothers would certainly explore Stifler's persona of men's-magazine cool without mockery, and with sensitivity to his frail ego. As Stifler, Seann William Scott is the Tyler Durden of this nerdy fight club, the only teenage character who hasn't learned some important life lesson, a rock of jockularity in the insecure world of dorks. His parties are where beer and hormones mix (sometimes literally) into memories of pretty girls and awkward fumblings. In a series that often force-feeds us overwrought neuroses, Stifler's disregard for anything that doesn't directly feed his carnality is a bit refreshing.

Yet American Wedding unmasks something in his character that has been foreshadowed in both preceding films, as if the trilogy was meant to be his all along. The Girls of Stifler are of low self-esteem, and Stifler casts their rejections aside because they "can't handle the Stif-meister." And, of course, there's Stifler's mom, who "got the house in the divorce," and her infatuation with Finch, the tadpole sophisticate who's everything Steve is not. To mask his insecurities about taking on responsibility in the real world, Stifler coaches football at his former high school less to teach the art of tackling and more to enlighten the neophytes in the ways of being a complete macho asshole. But he also enthralls a gay bar by dancing to "Maniac," declaring that those gay guys "did want to fuck me" after all. Not to mention that he waltzes with Jim, alone, in the high school gym to get himself invited to the wedding to hit on bridesmaids. Or that he throws on a sweater and talks flowers with the mom of the chick he wants to lay.

With a character like Stifler, who is just an act himself, an actor can build many layers into his portrayal, and then reference those layers to show the character's complexity without resorting to overt explanations. A lesser actor might have needed some banal dialogue that updates the audience on the character's mindset, but Scott's brilliance here is his absence of self-awareness. Never does he break character and wink at the camera; he's apparently oblivious to his own underlying homoerotic conflict. Scott's Stifler is so rude, so crass, that the audience knows it's an put-on, but Scott doesn't undermine his performance by breaking Stifler's own "Stifler" act. We're left to wonder where "Stifler" comes from: The divorce? The detachment of his mom? The emotional distance allowed by his wealth? Stifler's humor arises from this persona, not the scat gags. Seann William Scott eating dog shit is not funny; Seann William Scott telling Jim that he's "like a blind man picking out his favorite porno" is gold.

The Farrellys have proved that there's little margin for error in the confounding tone of sentiment and shock. In its best moments, American Pie achieves the indefinable tone of There's Something About Mary, whereas the Weitz-less American Pie 2 is more like Me, Myself, and Irene. American Wedding falls somewhere in the middle. Jesse Dylan's movie comes closest to pop song wisdom not in its ska-bred teenagers, but in a character who probably grew up on his father's folk: Jim's dad. Levy eschews the buffoonery of most movie dads, creating a mixture of sadness and empathy that transcends the entire American Pie series. In his awkward confessions about Jim's mom, we see that he's not just trying to seem cool — he's lonely (it's telling that Jim's mom occupies no more than a few frames in the entire series) and desperate to connect with his son. In his counseling sessions, he relives the pain of youth and the pain of not really knowing, even at this age, what it all means. As he rambles on, we see that he thought wisdom would come with age, but found all that he had was affirmation. Levy's awkward digressions reveal the truth that being a father is itself an act: You pretend like you have the answers because it brings others comfort, but you're just as confused as a teenager. There's no explanation for how the human heart works, and the best we can do is make it up as we go, just like the verbal meanderings of Jim's dad … and Jesse's. The Weitzes might have given us a better Stifler, but Dylan's insight into Jim's dad is uniquely worthwhile.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)