Timstuff said:

My personal opinion is that the parents don't need to be in the college scenes. You can take a lot of dead weight out of the narrative by dicing those scenes, and they are not missed by the plot at all. The movie's plot is structured in a ABC manner, but there's a lot of stuff between the letters that bogs the story down.

If I were in your shoes, my goal with the Real Effin' Deal cut would be to get it close to the first movie's tone and pacing. There's room in there for some cheese, but restraint must be exercised. If Real Effin' Deal is meant to appeal to a broader audience, then the bathroom humor and most of the footage with the Twins save for the bare minimum are going to have to go. You'll still have Kitten Calendar Cut as your own personal version, so try to remember that if you are feeling hesitation about cutting stuff from the movie that you already like.

Well the first film's tone and pacing are something I'd like to avoid since I consider it far, far worse and more bloated then ROTF was.

And if keeping only what's needed by the plot, I could cut out quite a bit, including a lot of action pieces. But I get what you guys are saying. I may very well go and cut out the parents, but then I'll probably have to use the alternate Alice footage that Geiferg used because what's there without the parents is not a very strong closure point to the the early college scenes.

It just depends on how much effort I want to put in.

I think I'll take out the parents for the most part, but I'm going to leave in the arrival because it's short and the audio transition from the NEST scene to the bells is much better than to the loud music, unless I put that awful Lennox line back in.

Edit: Now that I look at it, I think I'm just going to remove the first scene with Alice and Leo drooling over her, and I'll keep a few more seconds of Sam's parents to have a good spot to end the scene (prior to the brownies).