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| Released: |
1999 |
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| Genre: |
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
96 |
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Four hormonally-challenged high-school lads are determined to lose their virginity by the end of their schooldays.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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Unfortunately for them, the local female population, some of whom are majoring in post-modern feminist thought, have different ideas.
"My friends call me Nova, as in Casanova," says the sports jock, in his idea of a cool chat-up line, only for the girl of his dreams to remark "That's pathetic."
Jessica, a plump, ginger-haired girl who's given up sex advises one of the boys on a more promising line of tactics. "Tell her you love her, " she says. "That's how I was duped".
The most chronic self-abuser of the four suffers repeated humiliation as his parents catch him at it, and his one prospective triumph with a Czech nymphomaniac turns out to be a nightmare of sexual embarrassment broadcast live to his friends over the Internet.
The reason for the movie's huge success lies in five or six big laughs, of the gross-out variety which made a hit of There's Something About Mary. American Pie is rightly famous, or notorious, for several scenes which would have been considered beyond the bounds of bad taste even three years ago.
One involves the involuntary drinking of bodily fluids (beautifully timed as a piece of comic business - Harold Lloyd might have approved, if he could have brought himself to watch). Another involves the unusual placement of a musical instrument. The third, and most celebrated, involves the leading man doing unspeakable things to mom's apple pie.
It's raunchy if you're easy-going about bad taste, and good reason to stay away if you aren't. It is also - and here is its only justification - funny. Better still, the plot sustains itself, and keeps you guessing. The teenage characters - initially obnoxious - develop and mature to the point where one actually becomes quite fond of them. They are also very well played by a gallery of bright young unknowns.
In the end, American Pie emerges as one of the most thoughtful analyses I have seen of sex among modern teenagers - its complex relationship with both love and friendship, the urge to explore one's physical boundaries, peer pressure, emotional commitment and so on…
Adam Herz's screenplay has the wisdom to wear its intelligence lightly, and director Paul Weitz shows the same sparky wit that his script for Antz did.
This is a film which deserves its popularity among the young, and will remind older people of some things they might like to have forgotten. Parents of teenage children should see this movie, if only for information; they will end up laughing a lot more than they expected.
The coarseness of the jokes means that the film has been likened to Porky's and National Lampoon's Animal House, but there's a humanity and underlying sense of values which raise this movie well above those cultural excrescences.
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, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Chris Klein 