American Pie

AMERICAN PIE (1999)

I'm not really going to write a lot about this movie, because I don't think there's really a lot to say, other than it's being oversold just a tad. It's been called the Porky's of the '90s, and, although I'm overdue to see it again, I think Porky's was one of the funniest movies of the '80s. In fact, some free rag I was reading compared American Pie to The Graduate as far as being an honest study of sexual confusion! What the hell?

The kid channeling the guy from Seinfeld and the chick on hiatus from Buffy... American Pie is the story of a bunch of guys who are eager to lose their virginity before high school and in fact make a pact to get some booty by their senior prom. It says a lot about the nature of the movie that there's not really anything at stake if they don't. It's not like anyone is going to leap off a bridge or anything. It's not really a plot; it's a conceit. Each of the guys has their various inroads (so to speak) and has to puzzle out his approach on his own. For example, Kevin's got a regular girlfriend who won't seem to go all the way. Oz has decided to go sensitive and joined the choir. Finch has paid a female friend to lie and say how great he is in bed. Etc., etc.

American Pie is reasonably funny, but it's more like an R rated episode of Saved by the Bell, with a thing or two swiped from Seinfeld (someone performing a sex act with crib notes written down, and, in fact, Jason Biggs as Jim somehow manages to be channeling George Costanza without being fat or balding). There's no real build to the raunchiness, in which one scene plays off another; most of the stuff seems to happen in a void. However, unlike Porky's, the cast here is uniformly likeable (even the neanderthalic jock) and generally all the friends are supportive of each other's decisions. The almost sweet nature of a lot of the romance in American Pie made me think that, like South Park and There's Something About Mary, we're either in a new age of foul-mouthed romance and good morals, or today's hacks have figured out that people want their crudity without feeling scummy afterwards. What's odd about American Pie is that parts of it seem reasonably true to life. It points to some sort of schism in either me or American sexuality (or both) that I can say that about both this movie and Kids which is American Pie's polar opposite. My secret suspicion about American Pie is that its success lies in not being too outrageous. I know a lot of true life stories of high school sex that are more hilarious, more embarrassing and more awful than anything in this movie (in fact, a good half of those stories come from my family), which may be why people come out of this movie looking both happy and relieved. American Pie is close enough to real life to be reassuring (we were all horny fuckups and we can look back on that with relief), and far enough away that we don't have to actually remember what that was like.

I have no idea why I picked this picture. Interestingly enough, although I would be loathe to call it a study or anything, American Pie shows a lot more variation in its female characters. With the exception of Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth in the thankless Kim Cattrall role), the sexpot foreign student, the women cover a wide range of believable personalities and sexual attitudes, my favorite being Michelle, the geek girl in Band. Sigh.

Anyway. American Pie is no Porky's, no Graduate, in fact it may not even be good-natured flip side to The Last American Virgin, but it didn't manage to disappoint my slothfully low expectations. If you set yours low enough or secretly need reassurance about your high school days, you may enjoy it as well.

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