American Pie - Band Camp - DVD Review

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Review

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This is the 4th instalment of the American Pie series, most of which I have enjoyed as the fun movies that they have intended to be. But with the cast of the previous three movies moving on and a whole new cast in this film, albeit as different characters. Would the film be as good, or just a studio milking the franchise to a “film too far”?

Centering on Steve Stiflers little brother, Matt. (Tad Hilgenbrinck) Matt’s penchant for mischief and practical jokes very quickly earn him a shameful punishment – band camp.

Deciding to use his punishment to his advantage he purchases a number of small cameras that he can hide away within the camp and capture scantily clad women on hard drive so he can make his own mini movie “bandies gone wild”.

Elyse (Arielle Kebbel), his old flame is the team leader of his schools “real” band and they are at camp to try and win a competition, Stifler manages initially to screw up the whole teams hopes of winning almost every chance he gets, but rediscovers feelings for old flame Elyse and needs to decide whether to continue through with his original idea, or to help Elyse.

Comedies are there to make you laugh, personally I have a varied sense of humour, i don't mind gross humour like in the other AP films, as long as it is done well. When it got to the end credits I thought the film was ok, I had laughed a little, although not as much as in the first American Pie, and I was entertained. But a lot of the gags were rehashes of stuff in the previous films and a bit tired. The Sherminator who makes a comeback appearance as the guidance counsellor is not funny anymore, and Eugene Levy, who is the only other tenacious link with the other films is sadly wasted as the camps MACRO (Moral And Conflict Resolution Officer), although still worth the occasional grin.

There are other questions that came to mind as I watched the film such as, “how the hell did he afford all that equipment”? After all it must have come to a $1000 or more, this is a kid at school, how can he afford that? So in certain aspects there has been little thought gone into this film, I felt that Band Camp is a churned out movie that the studio have created purely for financial gain on the name of the original, better movies. The plot is one we have all seen before (and no doubt again). So when all is said and done I think that this is a pie to far and should mostly certainly be the last the in the American Pie series.

Picture

On my setup the picture was very good, colours were rich and vibrant and shadows were dark without losing detail. I didn’t notice any edge enhancement or grain, and overall quality was high.

Sound

I listened to the DTS soundtrack, but the disk also features DD5.1 soundtrack too. The sound was clear and crisp with the dialogue clear. When there were lots of sounds on the go, during band practise for example the speakers never appeared cluttered and handled it all well, Bass was nice and tight, but I didn’t really detect anything special from the rears most of the time.

Extras

Out Takes
4 minutes of screws ups showing repeats of rehashed humour

Deleted Scenes
Approx 11 minutes of scenes deleted from the film, nothing outstanding just a bit more of the same humour

Band Camp Dirty Diary
17 minutes of behind the scene footage, which was quite enjoyable to watch, Arielle looks lovely even at 6am

Band Camps Dirty Secrets
A short piece that has two of the films extras show us various set on the film, one of them seems to be a bit of a wannabe adult movie star.

Secret Rovercam Footage
14 minutes of pointless rubbish

Baby got Back Video
Scantily clad women in wet t-shirts, need I say more?

disk was reviewed on the following kit.

Harman Kardon AVR7300 Amplifier
Harman Kardon DVD 22 Multi Region DVD Player
KEF PSW2500 Sub-woofer (maple)
KEF Q4 front and surround speakers (maple)
KEF Q6 centre speaker (maple)
Phillips 30" 30PF9975 LCD TV

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About Steve Peto

I think it was around 1979 when I tried to sneak into the local Odeon cinema to see Ridley Scott’s Alien that I started to become more aware of movies and finding out what I liked in terms of genre. But somewhat surprisingly even at that young age I was enjoying some of the older films such as Forbidden Planet.

It was not until I was given my first DVD that the bug hit me. And it was all down to a mate giving me a Region 1 version of “The Matrix” as his player was only a region 2. From there it has been a mainly constant purchasing process to increase my collection which currently sits at 1000+ individual movies and television episodes; although invelos which only counts per barcode shows it as 485.

I have been on the Digital Lard site since its earlier incantation DVD Lard, and after a period of time took the plunge into doing reviews and this is what I currently do.

My favourite genres are mainly Action/Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi and Mystery although I do like films from other genres too.

Ten of my favourites film are (in no particular order) Alien, Aliens, 12 Angry Men (1957), Forbidden Planet, The Thing, Jaws, Blade Runner, 300, Full Metal Jacket, Forrest Gump, Although there are plenty more movies that I could list here.

Favourite actors at the moment would be Christian Bale, Christopher Walken, Johnny Depp, Basil Rathbone, Samuel L Jackson, Favourite directors are David Fincher and Ridley Scott.