A year has passed since Jim's pie-molestings antics and his fling with Michelle, and now, back in Great Falls for the Summer, all of the gang is there, Oz, Vicky, Kevin, Finch and the infamous Stifler. But things just aren't the same, and in search of "the best summer ever", the five lads rent a beach house for the summer, paid through their summer job decorating houses.
There's little story to explain, as this is all about growing up. The boys get themselves in to a number of outrageous situations as they work towards the party to end all parties, meeting old friends along the way.
One of my favourite things about the American Pie films is the way that the characters represent certain character traits that we all have, Jim, the accident-prone softy, Finch, who wants to be more mature than he is, Kevin, who likes things the way they were, and Stifler, downright offensive without intending malice. We all see ourselves as certain characters but ultimately most of us are Jim most of the time. Thankfully he occupies most of the screentime, and makes you laugh throughout. The best scenes are undoubtedly his with Michelle, with the "Petie" scene being laugh out loud funny. Alyson Hannigan's turn as Michelle is excellent, and she deservedly gets more quality screen time this time round. In fact this film is really about Jim, Michelle and Stifler, with all of the other characters relegated to background parts. This works, as they are the funniest, and as a result, this is probably a more continuously funny film than American Pie, even if they do resort to baser humour (lesbians, special ed, foreign objects and mistaken identity carrying most of the laughs).
If you are a fan of the genre you will love this film, it represents the best of the genre without getting stuck on sentimentality which Hollywood likes but doesn't really have a place in this kind of movie.
On to the DVD and a clear Anamorphic picture is complemented by equally excellent dts and DD5.1 soundtracks. The dts track in particular really delivers during the musical sections. The unrated version certainly adds more, but it is mostly of swearing and additional dialogue than the different scenes found in the original. As for extras:
Deleted scenes
Some good extra footage which fleshes out some of the included scenes. The most interesting one is a different version of the summary, where the boys recap on what's happened prior to the final party. It makes a nice link to the original movie, but is not as good as the version used.
Making of
Fairly run of the mill behind the scenes, though it does show some insight in to the way that Eugene Levy works - well known for improvisation, there's a few shots of him shooting scenes, and a few cool outtakes, but nothing more than you would watch a couple of times.
Feature commentary
As per American Pie, this is a very entertaining track, which is often as funny as the movie itself.
Outtakes
Many shots of the team fluffing their lines and generally messing about, pretty funny throughout.
Casting tapes
See the original cast going through the reading process. Why this didn't make the original American Pie Ultimate Edition I don't know, but a nice record.
American Pie top 10
Voted for on the website, the top 10 scenes from the two films. It's quite cool to have, but a bit of a novelty, especially if you own both films.
Overall, the disk boasts over 10 hours of entertainment, I don't know how they got to that figure, but this is a very good disk of a very funny film, and worthy of being in your DVD collection.