Better film if you are not an American Graffiti devotee

This film works better if you are not that enamored or particularly remember the characters in American Graffiti.

After the first film the characters moved on with their lives and this sequel only picks out what the characters were doing leading up to that one year that they feature in and did not cross over into other stories. I suspect the critics expected the characters to be in and out of everyone's vignette.

Maybe a fifth chapter could have been shot and set in maybe 1975 (sometime after the fall of Saigon) where the surviving characters meet up and welcome Toad out of jail, he was say arrested crossing the US border ( unseen on screen)and sentenced for desertion. It could have allowed for a one day shoot to feature Richard Dreyfus who had not had an eventful new years in the previous years since that night in American Graffiti.