American Pie 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

American Pie 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Paul Weitz's raunchy and racy coming of age story, 'American Pie (1999)' arrives on 4K UHD courtesy of Universal. The film focuses its attention on a group of young men, Jim (Jason Biggs), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Oz (Chris Klein), and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), who have made a desperate pact to lose their virginity by prom night. Tara Reid (Vicky, 'The Big Lebowski') Alyson Hannigan (Michelle, 'How I Met Your Mother'), Shannon Elizabeth (Nadia, 'A Home for the Holidays'), and Natasha Lyonne (Jessica, 'Poker Face') round out the cast. The film is also noteworthy for accelerating Jennifer Coolidge's ('The White Lotus') career, due to her highly memorable, though small, role. All of the legacy on-disc supplemental material has been brought forward here. A Blu-ray disc and a Digital Code Redeemable via Movies Anywhere are also included.

American Pie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The original Blu-ray release from 2012 wasn't exactly met with high praise. Colors weren't always convincing, whites could be dingy and blacks, while deep, could often consume detail, and shadows tended toward being murky and impenetrable. Considering the praise my colleague, Dr. Svet Atanasov, heaped upon the recent 88 Films release, my hopes were high for the Universal release. On the whole, the 2160p presentation with Dolby Vision is a bit of a mixed bag. There are improvements to be seen in colors, which generally appear more richly saturated. Skin tones, too, are typically healthier and more realistic. There's a modest uptick in fine detail as well. The most substantive issue the presentation has to contend with is the darkness of the transfer. While the film, to my eye, has always appeared a bit dark, in several instances here, it appears noticeably darker. This holds true not only for indoor shots like those at Stiffler's party at the film's start, but sunlit exteriors as well as the characters enter and leave the school and converse on the grounds. The darkness can swallow a fair amount of fine detail of the characters or items that are the focal point of the shot, and absorb what's in the shadows behind or around them. Based on the information I've been able to find it seems that the UK's 88 Films was behind bringing the film into 4K and performed a fair amount of work to resolve various issues, and then shared the results with Universal. It's puzzling, then, that the end result of the two releases would seem so different. While I haven't had a chance to see the 88 Films release of this title, and while it's always somewhat sketchy to base opinions on screenshots and comments, the viewing experience Dr. Svet Atanasov describes with the 88 Films release is unfortunately not consistent with what I'm seeing here from Universal.

Screenshots are sourced from the 4K UHD discs and downscaled to 1080 and are in SDR.

American Pie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For a comments regarding the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that accompanies the film, please follow this link.

American Pie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All of the legacy features have been brought forward for this release, with no new on-disc material added. For an accounting of these on-disc extras, please follow this link.

American Pie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

That American Pie would go on to spawn a number of sequels and become something of a springboard to launch the careers of several of those in its cast is as unexpected and surprising as the film itself. Many films have gone down the same road that American Pie treads with far less funny, endearing, and enduring results. Yet, some 26 years later, the raunchy comedy that could is remains as much a part of our collective movie vernacular as ever. Most of the jokes still land, the cringe-inducing moments still induce cringes, and the real lessons learned by the high schoolers are still important. Modest gains are to be found in Universal's 4K UHD release of the title, though the overall darkness of some of the scenes is concerning to my eye. For fans of the film who are anxious to upgrade it to the latest home video format, and with appropriate caveats in mind, American Pie 4K comes cautiously recommended.