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Note: This review refers to the unrated DVD version, which I got drunk enough to actually rent and watch one dull weekday afternoon. God help me. It's also somewhat longer than usual--the decline of "teen movies" is a subject near and dear to my heart.
One thing directors Paul and Chris Weitz, not to mention the numerous stars of American Pie, had to rave about when asked about this movie was the realistic content it contained, so that it would better depict the struggles and frustrations of adolescent sexual frustration. Here was a movie that was supposed to transcend such timeless classics as Porky's and Revenge of the Nerds and tell what teenagers were really going through, all because of the benefits of an R-rated version of the pre-college years of proms, parties and pussy.
What a sham. In Porky's, we got to experience cheap voyeurism of boys peeking at girls through a wall in a girl's shower stall, but at least we weren't supposed to believe it wasn't cheap voyeurism and some timeless piece of filmmaking instead. Ditto Nerds. With American Pie, which cleaned up at the box offices and is still raved about in high school hallways, this cheap voyeurism is supposed to represent the teenaged angst and ardor that John Hughes and Cameron Crowe hijacked so effectively in movies like Sixteen Candles and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, thereby making us all sit back and exclaim: "Wow. I know exactly what that feels like."
Empty promises and ridiculous assumptions. American Pie chronicles the efforts of four senior high school students' attempts to lose their virginity before graduating high school, providing few memorable moments, plenty of cheap bathroom humor, and not a few outright ridiculous assumptions about the "true life" of a teenager. I haven't been a teenager by Webster's definition for six or seven years now, but even that isn't long enough to make me believe that these guys are going through any "typical" frustrations. If they were, I'd be combing the high schools right now.
The movie starts out at a party hosted by one Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott), where Jimmy, Finch, Kevin and Oz (Jason Biggs, Eddie Kay Thomas, Thomas Ian Nicholas and Chris Klein, respectively) realize that they're about to graduate high school and remain virgins. "They'll probably have dorms for guys like us," Jimmy complains. They sure will. They'll also have dorms for guys who have never attended a party and drank alcohol without fear of reprisal, dorms for guys who have never given a girl head or been given head in return; guys who have never even kissed a girl, for that matter--and yet all of these things will happen to these guys before they get lucky. So we're supposed to commiserate with these saps because they've never gone "the extra mile." Like I said before: my problems in high school were getting noticed by girls. Typical my ass.
Kevin, in a fit of masculine comraderie matched only by his stellar pubescent performance in Rookie of the Year, urges everyone to use teamwork (i.e. confidence-building, strategy planning) so they'll have sex with a willing female counterpart by Prom night. (And we all know how important it is to have sex by Prom night--it's like your date will turn into a pumpkin or something if you don't.) The four agree, and here's where things go from worse to even worse.
Each character's efforts, despite Kevin's proclamation of comraderie, are almost completely individual, and that's one of the few winning points of the movie. Finch drops money in order to spread false rumors about himself, thus empowering his reputation with the women. Oz discovers a latent talent for jazz singing and hooks up with Heather (Mena Suvari, of American Beauty fame--after doing American Americans she's said she'll move on to international roles), who receives his "sensitive" efforts with a guarded willingness oddly endearing for a teenaged film of this caliber. Kevin's efforts to have sex with girlfriend Vicki (Tara Reid) are more than successful--after learning from his brother the secrets of cunningulus through a carefully-hidden book in the school library, he's not just at third base, but in the press box signing autographs, and we're right there cheering him on. However, any complaints he has about his virginity are likely to fall on deaf ears at this point. It's Jimmy who's supposed to epitomize the clueless geek we've all presumably stood in the shoes of at one point or another, and that's what really pisses me off about this movie.
Jimmy turns out to be the one who goes to the most ridiculous lengths to get a piece of the action. It's he who gets a request from Czech-babe Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) to help her with her science homework. He leaves her to change in his room, runs over to Kevin's house to watch her on the web cam he's so carefully set up, and watches her pleasuring herself, at which point his buddies urge him to go back while her pump is still primed and become her handyman (pardon the pun). It's he who, acting on his friends' description of "third base" as "apple pie," decides to experiment on a home-baked apple pie on his parents' kitchen table. It's he who will go the extra kilometer while his friends are only going the extra mile, and it's he who we're supposed to identify with the most.
Don't get me wrong--I'm not being a prude here. If Alex, in Portnoy's Complaint, can screw an athletic sock and find his way into the annals of American literature, this isn't that much of a stretch. It's just that, in order for me to "identify" with such a character, I'd have to believe that any urges I might have to experiment on an apple pie couldn't possibly wait until I could get the pie into the privacy of a bedroom, a bathroom or at least the back alley of a Blockbuster video. When Jim is caught by his father (and I repeat, the trailer editors made no such efforts to hide the inevitable outcome of such a scene, so don't blame me for ruining such visual pizzaz for you), my reaction wasn't "Oh God that's embarassing" but "What the hell did you expect would happen you dumb shit? A hand of vaseline is one thing, but a pie? How are you supposed to hide that behind your back?" Comedy like that doesn't work because it's not realistic. It's contrived, it's premeditated, and it's too absurd to have any merit whatsoever. I've heard of women sneaking cucumbers out of the refrigerator in the middle of the night, and, while not exactly bursting apart at the seams to view such a scene, I would find that more realistic, and therefore more funny.
Then I'm supposed to believe that a beautiful woman would choose, out of all the places on God's green earth, to get herself off in the bedroom of a boy she supposedly hardly knows, and then decide, apparently on a what-the-hell basis, to let him join in upon his furtive return. I mean, I have a friend who's been to the Czech Republic, and yes, apparently the women are incredible, but Czechoslovakia is not Hornybabeland or Planet Slut, and the entire scene to me does not spell out hilarity and spontaneous visual comedy but the contrived daydreaming of a screenwriter still trapped in his boy's world, endlessly speculating what might have happened if he'd been dealt a few more cards than he had been. (At the risk of sounding small, one look at the screenwriters and you know damn well apple pies, or even athletic socks, might have been out of these guys' league just as much as any big-breasted babe--Weitz: "So you want to get it on?" Apple Pie: "Uh, look, Chris, I like you, but only as a friend.")
The movie does have its funny points. Alyson Hannigan is absolutely hysterical as the flute-toting band geek Michelle (although her piece de resistance is also stolen by her single line from the trailer), and Finch, because of his successful melding of geek persona and suave ahead-of-his-time debonaire, is a truly memorable character. Unfortunately, most of the characters are simple stereotypes with occasional bouts of philosophical overture that are supposed to give us depth to their personalities but instead come off as attempts to make the movie more deep than it could possibly hope to be. Indeed, the movie's ending, supposed to be evocative of hopes and dreams of a future where more things than sex will matter, instead makes me think back to the John Hughes movies where the characters actually walked away with something more than they entered with. Here, the most anyone seems to have learned is how to put a rubber on, Oz's virtue notwithstanding (he spends the night entwined in a naked embrace with girlfriend Heather, but does not go any further towards actual consummation. Bully for him).
The reason realism in this movie is such an important point to me is that that's what's supposed to make scenes like this funny. We've all walked into parties feeling awkward and out of place. We've all kissed a crush for the first time and not known what the hell we were doing. These are scenes which, when crafted well enough, can make us laugh, cringe or cheer on cue. We have not experienced the misadventures of poor old Jimmy (who does eventually wind up losing his virginity, though not in the way he originally conceived), and the assumption that we're supposed to take this all as a "realistic" depiction of a high schooler's life separates everyone's high school experience from the cinematic environment that was once actually realistic, but now is a manipulative romance novel designed to fill seats through the promise of graphic sex scenes.
But the movie has definitely made its mark. Listen in hallways across the country: "Man, American Pie was funny! He humped a pie!"
When they complained about the raciness of double beds back in the fifties, they had no idea what they were talking about.
--Long
Copyright 2002 Tso Long Productions ©