American Pie (1999)
Directed by Paul Weitz
At a high-school party, four friends find that losing their collective virginity isn't as easy as they had thought. But they still believe that they need to do so before college. To motivate themselves, they enter a pact to all "score" by their senior prom.
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Jim (Jason Biggs)’s storyline also borrows heavily from the Farrelly’s movies (mostly “There’s Something About Mary”) and various other teen flicks like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, but at least it’s hilarious.
But with a healthy sense of humor about youth and sex, this movie will earn a coveted spot next to Fast Times at Ridgemont High in every college kid's video collection.
The following year offered Fast Times at Ridgemont High, with a similar menu of sexually explicit gags and innuendo.
It’s hardly the graduating class of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
It's as if the final print of Fast Times at Ridgemont High had been directed by the Farrelly brothers: Damn the torpedoes.
It skillfully employs a broad mix of pop tunes, much like John Hughes' movies did, going so far as to pay a couple of homages to The Breakfast Club , most evidently when the prom band covers Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)."
In the pantheon of teen comedies, "American Pie" doesn't come close to measuring up with the '80s John Hughes flicks, like "Sixteen Candles" (still my favorite), "The Breakfast Club," or "Ferris Buellers Day Off," nor is it quite as satisfying overall as the recent "10 Things I Hate About You," but this film is actually different than those.
Herz and Weitz have decided to teach us a few things about getting some - namely that if you can't actually remember how awful it was not to be having sex in school, copping other movies' memories of it is a good plan B. Their film makes the inevitable nods to "Porky's," "Revenge of the Nerds," "Meatballs" and John Hughes, while aiming for the crassness of "There's Something About Mary" - which, never mind the haters, is proving to be the feel-good movie of nearly any year.
While I'm sure its makers would love to see their film compared to last summer's surprise hit "There's Something About Mary," especially since both trade on jokes about autoeroticism and toilet humor, "American Pie" is to "Something About Mary" what Homer and Jethro are to Aristotle.
Jim (Jason Biggs)’s storyline also borrows heavily from the Farrelly’s movies (mostly “There’s Something About Mary”) and various other teen flicks like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, but at least it’s hilarious.
Its most outlandish scenes do not surpass envelope-stretching sequences from 1998's There's Something About Mary and Happiness.
The film is likely to entertain teens who are already thinking about sex, and its gross-out humor will appeal to fans of There's Something About Mary.
I actually find this give-and-take treatment of sexual longing preferable to the single-minded fetishizing of the nearly perfect, underwear-clad girl-next-door-glimpsed-through-the-window endorsed by There's Something About Mary.
Focusing more on the 'sex' aspect, rather than the romance one (even though there is a bit of that too), "American Pie" is more reminiscent of the various '80s raunch-fests, like "Porky's" or "The Last American Virgin."
The time was the early 80s, when films like Porky's, Losin' It and The Last American Virgin celebrated the adolescent male in all his sex-obsessed glory.
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Granted, we've come a long way from cautionary teen-dream fantasies like A Summer Place (1959), in which sex before marriage instantly leads to unplanned pregnancy.
Herz and Weitz have decided to teach us a few things about getting some - namely that if you can't actually remember how awful it was not to be having sex in school, copping other movies' memories of it is a good plan B. Their film makes the inevitable nods to "Porky's," "Revenge of the Nerds," "Meatballs" and John Hughes, while aiming for the crassness of "There's Something About Mary" - which, never mind the haters, is proving to be the feel-good movie of nearly any year.
I am a child of the 80s, so I will always think of films like “Porky’s” and “Revenge of the Nerds” as the quintessential teen sex comedies.
A classic of the genre for whatever it's worth, Animal House endures because it's a smarter beast than first impressions would suggest--allaying itself in my mind with a film like Evil Dead II more comfortably than, say, American Pie , in that there are certain films in devalued genres that deserve to be entered into a larger dialogue.
If you think too hard about it, Animal House isn't a whole lot better than today's teen sexploitation films like American Pie .
Just ask the folks who unleashed frat-house staples like Animal House and Porky's on hormonally charged audiences, knowing full well that sex doesn't sell just cars and shaving cream.
Whereas previous films in this genre, Animal House and Porky's, put the emphasis totally upon the male libido, this drama written by Adam Herz and directed by Paul Weitz manages to include in its purview the sexual urges and perspectives of young women as well.
American Pie, the profound and ennobling tale of four rabidly horny high school seniors who try to lose their virginity by prom night, looks, at a glance, like modern teen-movie repackaging of a very low and cynical order that is, it appears to be a revival of the drooling slapstick raunchiness of Porky's, the low-budget 1982 hit that was essentially a dumbed-down, fleshed-out Animal House.
American Pie isn't anything great or original; it has been constructed to be to the '90s what Animal House was to the '70s and Porky's was to the '80s.
The cast includes Alyson Hannigan (Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as the nerdy, apparently sexless girl who becomes a last-minute choice as a prom date for one of the guys who has given up on ever losing his virginity; Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverly Hills) as a matchmaker for hire; Thomas Ian Nicholas (Rookie of the Year); and many other young actors.
Alyson Hannigan of WB's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which is always better than this film, is present as a chatty band member who may not be as prim as she appears.
Chris Owen plays a slimy character named Sherman, very unlike the character he played in the fine film "October Sky." Natasha Lyonne and Mena Suvari, who play Jessica and Heather, respectively (both appeared in "Slums of Beverly Hills") and Tara Reid ("Urban Legend"), who plays Vicky, and Alyson Hannigan (plays Willow in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") the flute-playing Michelle all create interesting characters in the movie.
But the one person who stands out from among the crowd, who creates the unforgettable character I will easily remember for years to come, is Alyson Hannigan (TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), as the annoying flutist who never stops talking about her experiences at band camp.
One (Alyson Hannigan of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") is a "band dork" with a surprising personality quirk.
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In the pantheon of teen comedies, "American Pie" doesn't come close to measuring up with the '80s John Hughes flicks, like "Sixteen Candles" (still my favorite), "The Breakfast Club," or "Ferris Buellers Day Off," nor is it quite as satisfying overall as the recent "10 Things I Hate About You," but this film is actually different than those.
And Finch learns why The Graduate is such a popular movie.
Less interested in the fluidic facts of getting fucked that dominate teen sex comedies from Porky's to the American Pie franchise, The Graduate wants to examine varieties of discomfort.
Like the heroes of “The Graduate” and “Rushmore”, Finch is a sophisticated, quirky young man with an interest for older women.