It's been nine years since the teenage boy who screwed an apple pie got married to Alyson Hannigan, and if you were wondering what's happened to him since - wonder no more. The fourth (and final?) installment in the "official" American Pie canon (not counting the direct-to-DVD crap) hits theaters on April 6th and gives us a chance to check in with Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nichols, and Eddie Kaye Thomas to see where life has taken them. The trailer for American Reunion went live today, and if it does anything well it's that it assures us that they intend to maintain the franchise's brand of raunchy humor. Check it out below.
After watching that, think to yourself: which of those actors has gone on to the most visible career? If you had to choose one, it's probably Alyson Hannigan who's spent the last seven years on How I Met Your Mother. After that it's either Jennifer Coolidge (Stifler's mom) who has a cameo or small role in just about everything, or Seann William Scott (Stifler) thanks to his part in Role Models opposite Paul Rudd. Then it's Eddie Kaye Thomas, and only because of his small roles in the Harold & Kumar films, which is funny because John Cho (aka Harold) also launched his career from this franchise despite being a throwaway background character.
So those folks have gone on to success, and that only makes the oblivion that the others have since fallen into all the more striking. Jason Biggs has been hopping from one bad show or film to the next. Chris Klein starred in the painfully bad Caught in the Crossfire with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Mena Suvari all but vanished. And so did Tara Reid after a brief time on Scrubs. And as for Thomas Ian Nichols... Who? For every one of these actors whose gone on to do really funny stuff, there's another whose sunk to unfortunate depths.
For the latter group, it's easy to understand why they'd be willing to go back to an American Pie movie: they're not really that busy. But for Hannigan, Coolidge, or Scott, it seems a shame to come back after American Wedding ended on such a high note for the series in terms of comedy and story. The trailer doesn't look like it has all that brilliant of a hook to it, as the high school reunion story has been done a dozen times before.
Was this really a good idea?
(It's also really nice to hear them use Matt Nathanson's song "Laid", a nice throwback to earlier in the series.)
