Just One of the Guys (1985)
Directed by Lisa Gottlieb
When Terry Griffith loses her high school's writing competition, she's convinced that it's because she's a girl. So Terry decides to change high schools and pose as a boy to prove her point. Her brother, Buddy, helps her pass as a guy so well that she is soon making friends with the boys at school, including the attractive Rick, who becomes her new best friend. But her gender-swapping makes things difficult when she falls in love with him.
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SPOILERS AHEAD: The history of cinema is filled with shocking transformations in which a character's alternate identity is revealed to surprised witnesses: Jekyll's reversion to Hyde in any number of horror movies; Jack Lemmon's switch from "Daphne" to Jerry in front of suitor Joe E. Brown in "Some Like It Hot"; even undercover teen "boy" Joyce Hyser baring her breasts in "Just One of the Guys."
There's a scene straight out of Just One of the Guys where Mulan, pretending to be a man because otherwise her disabled father will be conscripted into the army, volunteers for guard duty so she won't have to shower with the boys.
Stories of women disguising themselves as men date back centuries, from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" to the '80s comedy "Just One of the Guys" and beyond.
In the tradition of gender-bending movies ranging from “Yentl” to “Just One of the Guys,” Mulan must find convoluted ways to avoid changing clothes and showering in front of her fellow soldiers, including the handsome Honghui (Yoson An), with whom she enjoys a verbal and physical spark.
What differentiates American Pie from those dirty eighties comedies, aside from a very nineties obsession with bodily fluids, is a cast that's light years more appealing than that of, say, Just One of the Guys.