Believe it or not, an intelligent look at teenage life

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2006)

"Everyone remembers their first piece of pie" says the tag-line to this movie and bar a few folks who have suffered severe amnesia, or were so drunk the only reason they knew they'd done the deed was through contracting thrush, it's a fair point to make. Everybody does remember losing their virginity and while a movie that focuses on four teenage lads dunder-headed attempts to do just that before graduation rolls around might seem crass, this isn't so much a movie about semen jokes as it is about being a teenager, a sentiment I'm sure we can all relate to in some way.
The storyline is simple, Jim (Jason Biggs), Oz (Chris Klein), Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) and Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) are sick to the back teeth of being sexually frustrated and make a pact to help each other like, make it with a girl dude by the time the end of school arrives - a standard racing the clock scenario that everyone who found themselves four months from University and still a virgin can surely relate to. Along the way they make a number of misguided attempts to achieve this which usually result in the luckless Jim suffering severe humiliation.
Thus far, so very cretinous, but this is no Van Wilder: Party Liason by any stretch of the imagination. These four guys are not cardboard caricatures whose basic purpose is to serve up fodder for a string of smutty jokes, they are genuinely endearing. Jim especially is a lovable, bumbling clown that recalls the nervous, jittery idiot that all of us once were when first confronted by bare female flesh. Oz is a bit of a weak link as his story is somewhat clunky, but the rest of the lads are just as appealing and Kevin's rather sweet relationship with his girlfriend Vicky (Tara Reid before she set about destroying her reputation) is handled beautifully.
Backing all this up is an equally strong cast of supporting characters. The girls that form the object of the boys lust are treated with similar dignity, rather than just being another line of bimbos on their way to exposing their breasts in a shower a la Porky's. Alyson Hannigan as the "not as geeky as she first appears" Michelle is hilarious, Sean William-Scott is a loud mouthed but ultimately rather charismatic oaf that everyone remembers, but Eugene Levy is the one who shines brightest. As Jim's good natured dad, he shows that parents trying to give their kids a nudge in the right direction can be just as witless as their offspring and he steals every scene he's in and pretty much the whole movie along with them.
Sure, this may make it sound like American Pie is too clever-clever for its own good, but don't worry, there are plenty of bodily fluid jokes to keep the laughs coming, including one brilliant moment where a series of mishaps leads to Jim dancing naked on the Internet that had me clutching my sides in pain from laughing too much. This is still a gross out comedy, but it is a gross out comedy that has genuine humanity behind it and if you're in the right frame of mind, is the sort of film that evokes a real sentimentality for the time when raging hormones and adolescent naivety were an everyday part of life.