American Pie Reunion serves up another cold slice

Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) and his wife Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) head back to East Great Falls to attend their 13-year high school reunion in the company of Oz (Chris Klein), who is now a minor television star, house husband Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) and eternal wanderer Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas),

The arrival of Heather (Mena Suvari) and her cardiologist beau (Jay Harrington) piques Oz's jealousy, while Kevin is nervous to see old flame Vicky (Tara Reid).

Meanwhile, sex-obsessed man-child Stifler (Seann William Scott) is up to his old tricks, hankering after one girl he crassly remembers as "the mouth that got away".

The fourth and hopefully final slice of the American Pie series hankers for the past, placing the thirty-something characters in the same cringeworthy situations that end with Jim trapping his manhood in a laptop or another member of the gang being spattered with bodily fluids.

Pert breasts and male appendages abound, shrouded in the usual sniggering schoolboy humour that still believes the lead character harpooning a warm apple pie with his lower portions is the dizzying pinnacle of bad taste.

It's one helping of filth too far for most of the characters, dooming them to repeat old mistakes or, in the case of Kevin and Finch, do nothing at all worthy of inclusion.

Whenever writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Jason Schlossberg hark back to happier times in the late 1990s, when Jim's charmingly innocent yearbook entry stated he hoped "to have the sex life of Ricky Martin", we're reminded how little the actors have achieved in the intervening years. On a completely different note, also released this week is animation The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!

The Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) is the leader of a ragtag group of seadogs, whose enthusiasm far exceeds his questionable ability to plunder booty.

His ship-shape subordinates include Pirate with Scarf (Martin Freeman), Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), Albino Pirate (Russell Tovey) and Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), whose glaringly obvious gender is concealed behind a false beard. To prove the naysayers wrong, The Pirate Captain sets out to capture a Bank of England treasure ship but inadvertently storms The Beagle and captures a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant) and his primate manservant, Mister Bobo.

The scientist leads the pirates on a merry dance that might just end with the beleaguered Captain taking home the coveted Pirate Of The Year prize.

Five years in the making, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists showcases the extraordinary craftsmanship of Bristol-based Aardman Animations to bring this colourful world vividly to life in stop-motion, cramming backgrounds with detail and sly visual gags that warrant a second viewing.

Grant is a snug fit for the misguided Captain and supporting cast have fun with their slender roles, including Brian Blessed in suitably bombastic form as the Pirate King.

The script walks the gangplank of belly laughs and gentle emotion. For all its dazzling qualities, there's no escaping a nagging feeling that this madcap voyage drops anchor short of the brilliance of Aardman's earlier works.

Wallace and Gromit can sleep easy: they have not been usurped in our affections.