American Pie Presents: Band Camp

Believe it or not, this was actually my first film I ever watched in the American Pie series of films. I had no idea that this was a spin-off, I just saw "American Pie" and went for it. Obviously, I later watched the original trilogy along with American Reunion and decided to go back to where my love for the series all began with American Pie Presents: Band Camp. Right off the bat, this series always has fantastic music. This film opens with the classic Universal logo and "She Is Beautiful - Andrew W.K." starts playing and immediately screams white kids in high school circa 2005. Immediately off to a good start. What follows right afterward is two guys watching some Girls Gone Wild type of video as we meet our protagonist, Matt Stiffler (Steve's younger brother) as he yells, "bite me f-face!" and I was like, "oh god. I forgot how much I hate this guy." And I mean it. From his opening line of dialogue, you hate him. He is an extremely unlikable dude. There is a scene where the hottest girl in school straight up asks him to have sex in the woods at a grad camp out and it made me wonder, "why in the world do girls like idiots like this?" Simple answer, he's good looking and he's a prick. Thankfully he gets embarrassed right afterward which was nice to see. So if you have read any of my reviews before, I say that it is almost impossible for me to enjoy a movie if I simply hate the protagonist (Pitch Perfect) but what is surprising is that Matt Stiffler really wins you over by the end of the film. His transformation actually seems plausible. When he starts to actually be nice to and becomes buddies with some of the bandies, when he actually cares about their band performance and when his love and affection turn from the popular mean girl of the school to just as beautiful, band-geek Elyse, you believe it. You buy that he would actually become friends with these people and you know what, I'd be friends with him too. So Matt Stiffler won me over and Tad Hilgenbrink did a pretty good job too. He can play the extremely annoying dumb jock and the empathetic guy who actually likes these bandies. As for the supporting cast, they are all fantastic. Arielle Kebbel, Jason Earles, Crystle Lightning and Omar Benson Miller are all actually pretty good actors and all do a good job, but Eugene Levy as Mr. Levenshtein might have his funniest lines in this film. He is absolutely wonderful. From there, it's all the drunk, sexual, gross humour you expect from American Pie but what I didn't expect was to get an ending with quite a bit of heart. I was surprised at how much of a good time this movie is and isn't a bad late night watch if you are a fan of the other films in the series.