Jesse Dylan can organise a broad comic set piece, but American Wedding finds him too willing to sacrifice character to the next humiliation. His later documentary work puts more emphasis on personal stories.
Fi1m perspective
In American Wedding (2003), Eugene Levy supplies the warmth while Seann William Scott makes more noise than the occasion needs. Jesse Dylan lets both approaches occupy the same film without making them work together. We laughed a few times, then grew tired of seeing the characters reduced to whatever embarrassment the next joke required. The wish to let these people grow up gives the comedy something worth caring about, but Dylan too often allows another humiliation to take priority.
Dylan came to features after directing music videos for artists including Tom Waits and Elvis Costello. His first feature, How High (2001), built its stoner comedy around Method Man and Redman; American Wedding followed, then Kicking & Screaming (2005), with Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall. That is a short run of broad comedies, moving from raunch to family sport without much evidence of a distinctive visual style. He seems comfortable arranging a film around performers and extended set pieces.
From the mid-2000s, Dylan’s work shifted towards documentaries, short films and projects for organisations. He produced Stacy Peralta’s Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008) and directed Soros (2019). Personal stories and interviews became central to his work, with more emphasis on helping an audience understand a complicated subject through the people involved.
Adam Herz’s screenplay for American Wedding needs a director who can keep the growing-up story alive while handling the crude set pieces. Dylan gets the occasional laugh, but lets the next demand for embarrassment dictate how the characters behave. His willingness to accommodate the ensemble is useful until the loudest performance begins to determine the whole film’s pace. More time with Levy would have helped, as would less pressure to make each humiliation bigger than the last. He is a reason to consider American Wedding, but we would not recommend it for him alone.
Biography
Jesse Dylan is an American film director and production executive. Born in New York City on 6 January 1966, he attended New York University film school and began his career directing music videos.
His feature directorial credits include the comedies How High (2001), American Wedding (2003) and Kicking & Screaming (2005). He has also directed documentaries such as Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008) and Soros (2020), and the Emmy-winning music video "Yes We Can" (2008).
Dylan founded the media production company Wondros and the non-profit organisation Lybba. He is the son of musician Bob Dylan and the brother of singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan.
