With its array of veteran cast members who aren’t Eugene Levy, and storylines that involve more central figures than distant generations of Stiflers, American Reunion takes us back to a simpler time, restoring a sense of order to the increasingly convoluted canon of movies about getting caught masturbating. As the trailer announces, it’s “the return of an American tradition,” with original star Jason Biggs metaphorically applying a salve to our fractured modern psyche by lubing up a tube sock and snapping one off to Internet porn, as guaranteed by the Constitution. And in keeping with the reassuring leitmotif of these American Pie movies, Biggs is almost immediately caught with his dick out—this time by his own son in a poignant illustration of the circle of life, a circle that Jason Biggs would put his dick in if he could. For America.
Forget for a moment our sociopolitical turmoil, with its partisan bickering and restless street protests. American Reunion calls on a nation divided to unite behind old-fashioned, industrious jacking it, right in front of our horrified loved ones. Why, this time even Alyson Hannigan gets caught masturbating, hers just one of many in a cast of familiar, soon-to-be-comically-contorted faces that includes Chris Klein, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Mena Suvari, Eddie Kaye Thomas, and Thomas Ian Nicholas, all of whom will return to fill us in on what their characters have been up to since their last outing, and all the embarrassing incidents where they were caught masturbating in the interim. It’s morning in America; time to masturbate.