Can't say I never laughed, but this is another overrated immature romantic comedy

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2010)

I've been aware of this movie's existence for many years now. Released in 1999, it's a romantic comedy which turned out to be an absolute success and spawned two sequels, "American Pie 2" in 2001, and "American Wedding" in 2003. I even remember listening to the "American Wedding" soundtrack six years ago, but never actually saw any film in the trilogy until this month, when I finally watched the first one. The original "American Pie" was released the year after "There's Something About Mary", another successful R-rated romantic comedy. I watched that 1998 release earlier this year and really didn't get the hype. I knew this film was a lot like that one, and thought it was slightly better than its predecessor, but still vastly overrated.
Jim Levenstein, Chris "Oz" Ostreicher, Kevin Myers, and Paul Finch are four high school friends who are nearing the end of their senior year. One of their fellow students is Steve Stifler, a popular sex-crazed jock who can be very rude and insensitive. After a geeky student named Chuck Sherman claims to have just had sex, and it appears he is telling the truth, the four friends are shocked. Jim, Oz, Kevin, and Finch then all vow to lose their virginity before graduation. Since they are convinced that Chuck has had sex before finishing high school, they figure they obviously can as well. In order to achieve their goal, they will have to get themselves girlfriends before the senior prom, which is coming up in three weeks. They don't have very much time, so each of them soon attempts to find a female peer and win her heart, but as the night of the prom draws nearer, they find that trying to lose their virginity in time isn't so easy.
This R-rated comedy is crude and juvenile from the beginning, showing Jim getting caught watching an explicit channel by his parents, and I have to admit that this made me laugh. Many more crude gags follow, and they often made me laugh at least lightly, including the part with Steve drinking beer which he doesn't realize Kevin has ejaculated into, though I'm not proud of that, and didn't find the scene that soon follows this, with Steve throwing up in the toilet, very funny. There's even a part showing Jim practicing sex on a pie, and this part probably wouldn't have made me laugh had it not been for his father coming in and catching him in the act! The scene with Jim's Dad, played by Eugene Levy, giving his son a bunch of porno magazines, and at least one later scene with this character giving his son sexual advice, also made me laugh. Levy's talent was probably a major reason for this. However, most of the movie isn't THAT funny, and is sometimes pretty lame, even cruel, such as the part where many students get to see the sexual activity in Jim's room on their computers, and Steve giving Finch diarrhea and leading him into the girl's washroom to let it out, even if I didn't keep a completely straight face throughout these segments. Finch even has to face Steve and many other students laughing at him when he comes out of the ladies' room! I also didn't care much for the characters in general, there's nothing too special about them, and very rarely do I see a movie with such a stupid and uninteresting premise!
Some super-raunchy modern comedies are really funny to me, while certain others have failed to make me laugh even one time while I watched them. For me, "American Pie" came somewhere in between. I did laugh at times, and I've certainly seen worse excuses for gags than any of the ones I saw here, but the laughs weren't consistent enough, and the movie certainly has some notably lame segments. Since there were parts I found funny, even if that's not necessarily a good thing, I give this juvenile R-rated romantic comedy a 6/10, but thinking about all the lameness I saw in it, I get the feeling even this rating is a little too generous. Unsurprisingly, nothing here made me feel the same way as the zipper accident in "There's Something About Mary" (I've said in previous reviews that nothing else in any movie ever has), but like that 1998 comedy, I really don't think this one deserved its massive success.