American Reunion

Perhaps to its credit, there are some similarities between American Reunion and an actual high school reunion — such as the feeling that while it’s nice to see some old friends and reminisce for a while, you realize soon thereafter that you’ve all moved on with your lives.

Those are the feelings shared by the audience and many of the characters in this hopefully final installment of the American Pie franchise that began with such promise in 1999 and helped to launch a wave of raunchy comedies that became box-office smashes in subsequent years.

Since the original film burst on the scene, however, the comedic landscape has changed, and the broad sex jokes that seemed audacious and edgy 13 years ago now seem tamer and safer by comparison.

For those counting, this is the fourth film in the sequence with all of the original cast members, and the first since American Wedding in 2003. That doesn’t count three subsequent “American Pie Presents” direct-to-video offshoots that weren’t connected.

The current film re-assembles the friends from East Great Falls, Mich., for a reunion 13 years after graduation, and finds each facing different crises in their lives, including married couple Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), abrasively rowdy Stifler (Seann William Scott), sportscaster Oz (Chris Klein), former sweethearts Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) and Vicky (Tara Reid), and mysterious Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas).

It probably wasn’t difficult to reunite the cast members after such a long layoff, since few have generated big paydays in the decade or so since they were last together.

The frat-house screenplay by directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay) takes an episodic approach, with extended sequences involving Jim’s well-meaning attempt to drop off a drunk teenage neighbor (Katrina Bowden) at her house without anyone’s knowledge, and a party at Stifler’s house that rekindles old relationships and causes various shenanigans.

For the most part, it’s predictably low-brow stuff, with some scattered big laughs along the way. Eugene Levy (playing Jim’s kind-hearted but clueless father) and Scott, in particular, take a fresh approach to familiar material.

There is a kind of nostalgic, almost heartwarming inside-joke tone that might satisfy fans of the original without much of an attempt to broaden the fan base.

Still, the pie is starting to turn stale after all these years, so hopefully it’s down to the last slice.

Rated R, 113 minutes.