The American Pie people are back, as raunchy, as ribald and as ready to gross you out as ever with their clumsy antics.

American Pie 2, the silly yet fun sequel to the surprise hit of the summer of 1999, features all the same actors in all the same roles, including Jason Biggs as the lovable geek Jim and the scene-stealing funnyman Eugene Levy as the ubiquitous Jim's Dad, a man for whom no situation involving his son is too embarrassing.

Joining them are Seann William Scott (still hilarious as the party dude Stifler), Shannon Elizabeth (provocative but no longer topless as the Czech mate), Alyson Hannigan (the flute-playing, charming oddball from Band Camp) and Eddie Kaye Thomas (still rhapsodizing about his romp with Stifler's Mom).

You also get reprises from Chris Klein, Natasha Lyonne, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Chris Owen, Tara Reid and Mena Suvari.

If you saw the original, there are no surprises here, just new laughs. For example, Jim avoids sexual experimentation with his mom's baked goods. Instead, forever obsessed with sex, he manages to Crazy Glue his hand to his penis. He's the same goof.

Stifler, meanwhile, inadvertently gets a golden shower from some guy while he thinks he is being doused with champagne by a girl. After his semen-spiked beer guzzling in the first flick, you can see a trend developing here.

If the original movie or any of the scenes I've hinted at here gross you out, then obviously American Pie 2 is not for you. Don't go.

The point is that you know what you are going to get: Juvenile, sexually-themed, low-brow humour that is just relentless. The reason both movies work as well as they do is that writer Adam Herz and his lively cast deliver the jokes without being mean or sarcastic.

New director J.B. Rogers, recovering from his wretched debut on the incest comedy Say It Isn't So, manages to carry on where American Pie co-directors Paul and Chris Weitz left off on the original (and they're still around as executive producers).

I wouldn't call the Pie people innocents -- they are all involved in sexual capers -- but they are rather sweet about it. And no one in either movie has a sexual tryst that is in any way forced, coerced or otherwise criminal. In other words, these are consenting pre-adults. The Pie flicks are date movies for teens and early twenties.

In the new one, the gang has moved on from high school and gets together for the summer after their first year of college, not that any of them seems to have actually learned anything of use in their miserable, sex-starved lives. Have I mentioned their unflagging interest in carnal knowledge? So things go crazy again.

If the situations get too stupid for you, there is always Levy to laugh along with. He once again indulges us and enriches the movie with some brilliant moments of comic acting that have less to do with delivering a punchline than creating a deliriously nutty situation. The sly devil just keeps getting better on screen.

In the end, American Pie 2 is worth noting because it's not one of those sequels that sucks, usual in the teen sex comedy genre. (More on: American Pie 2).

(This film is rated AA)

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