1999’s American Pie resurrected the type of teen-sex comedy that was rampant in theaters about 25 years ago, but died out around the time of 1982’s Porky’s. Like those older films, American Pie (and American Pie 2) mainly focused on sex, sex, and more sex -- as most high school students do. But as fixated on sex as the films’ teenagers were, they talked about it far more then they had it, and were more baffled about the whole experience than in control of it. And as lewd and crude as the film was at times, there was a strange innocence about it -- as there was in those films of the late 1970s and early ’80s.

American Wedding, the third installment in this series, reduces the cast to an essential core. We meet them here after they’ve finished university. The focus is again on Jim Levinstein (Jason Biggs), an unlucky but likable average American male, whose search for sex and happiness usually ends in disaster and embarrassment. In this film he has won the girl of his dreams, Michelle Flaherty (Alyson Hannigan), better known as the Band-Camp Girl. Jim’s world was turned around by Michelle at the end of the first film, he fell in love with her in the second, and now he’s decided that it’s time they got married.

American Wedding’s main downfall is that it’s shorter on plot than even the first two films. The proposal-to-wedding plotline provides little more than a thread of cohesiveness to let four young, horny guys get into all mischief -- everything from visiting a gay bar in search of a dressmaker, to a bachelor party that gets crashed when the groom invites the bride’s parents home for dinner on the same night. But while American Wedding may be short on story, some of its scenes are downright hilarious. Again and again I watched in amazement as the filmmakers cut haphazardly from scene to scene, wondering what, if any, logic could have progressed the story from there to here -- only to laugh out loud and nearly fall out of my seat moments later, when something absolutely hysterical would happen.

While American Wedding has its ups and down, it has enough big laughs that most patrons will leave feeling they’ve gotten their money’s worth. Ultimately, though, what has made this series work, through two sequels now, are the characters. The scenes between Jim and his father (Eugene Levy, the real underdog of the series) are, again, the most engaging. And Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who is crowned Master of the MILF here, gets more airtime in Wedding, along with another particularly memorable scene with "Stifler’s Mom" (Jennifer Coolidge). Then there’s Steve Stifler himself, played by Seann William Scott with such over-the-top enthusiasm that he’s almost become a live-action cartoon.

We go to these films to laugh out loud at their stupid scenarios, but we enjoy them most when we watch these hapless heroes we know so well try to move through life. I’m betting we’ll see a fourth installment in a year or two. American Honeymoon? American Divorce? More likely American Family.

• Go Back