American Reunion|Mary Alice Park, Lake Lanier — Georgia Water Playing Michigan

American Reunion is set in East Great Falls, Michigan, and the lake the characters keep drifting back to is supposed to be Lake Michigan. It is not. It is Lake Lanier, a Corps of Engineers reservoir in Forsyth County, Georgia, and the beach they walk onto belongs to Mary Alice Park at 1820 Mary Alice Park Road in Cumming. The production came here in late July 2011 with about a hundred extras and shot the lake stretch of the film, the part where the reunion weekend loosens up and the story stops pretending anyone has grown up.

Stand on the sand and the substitution is obvious and forgivable. Lanier's shoreline is red clay, pine and hardwood, water that goes green-brown by August, and from a low angle looking out at nothing but water and treeline it reads as any big northern lake. There is no skyline to give the geography away.

The park itself is small and plain: a swimming beach, a boat ramp open around the clock, picnic tables and grills, restrooms before you reach the sand. No pets, no alcohol. Gates open at eight in the morning and shut at nine at night.

Come on a weekday in early summer, before the wake boats churn it up, and you get exactly what the camera got. Flat water, a fringe of trees, no horizon line. The Michigan is a lie. The heat is not.