Some will love it, some hate it. Just like high school.

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 1999)

American Pie - ***
This film tells the story of four male high school friends in Michigan who enter into a pact with each other to lose their virginity by prom night. Jim (Jason Biggs) is an average kid who finds himself tongue-tied whenever he attempts to speak to a beautiful classmate like Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth,) a foreign exchange student. Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) has already gotten to third base with his longtime sweetheart Vicky (Tara Reid,) but he cannot figure out how to... steal home. Oz (Chris Klein) is a Lacrosse jock who joins the choir in order to meet chicks. There he meets Heather (Mena Suvari,) who becomes his duet partner. Finally there is Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas.) A true outsider at the school, Finch supplies his friends with homework assignments and refuses to use public restrooms. During the weeks preceding prom night, the guys pursue various romantic entanglements. Sometimes they find enlightenment, sometimes they find humiliation, but mostly they find humor.
When American Pie arrived in theaters, it was already cloaked in controversy. Here is a mass market comedy, geared toward teens, which barely escapes the dreaded NC-17. The film is so raunchy that it has been dubbed "There's Something About Pastry." Consider the tag line on the poster: "There's Something About Your First Piece." Is the movie too raunchy? No - but it pushes the envelope. There are three scenes in particular which will probably achieve a certain infamy. Let us quickly dispense with them so we can move on to the rest of the film. (1) The opening scene, in which Jim finds a unique use for a tube sock. (2) The party scene, where Stifler (Seann W. Scott) takes a drink of beer only to find that it is laced with a certain bodily secretion that was taboo in the mainstream cinema until 1998. (3) The scene in which Jim has intimate relations with an apple pie. Yes, the aforementioned scenes are crass, but are they funny? Jim's scenes are, because they both end in his being caught by his father. And they both reinforce the awkwardness and desperation of the teenage male. Stifler's scene, however, is merely gratuitous.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about American Pie is its warm-hearted center. Unlike Porky's or any of the other alleged "sex comedies" of the 80s, American Pie gives all of its characters, both male and female, well-rounded personalities. Of course the guys are interested in sex. But they're also supportive friends to each other, and they're interest in women is multi-dimensional. Oz, for instance, finds that he falls in love with Heather. What started out as a crass conquest turns into a rather sweet romance. The picture is also quite funny at times. I particularly liked the scenes between Jim and his father (Eugene Levy.) Another blockbuster scene is the one in which Jim performs a striptease for Nadia. What Jim does not know is that his performance is being beamed across the internet. American Pie is also successful in the way it presents us with the standard teenage stereotypes (jock, nerd, choir girl, band girl, etc.) and then proceeds to tear them down and show us that all of these characters have other dimensions.
Alas, the film sometimes gets in its own way. The direction, by Paul Weitz, is rather rudimentary, even clumsy at times. The truly romantic moments are undermined by dreary, by-the-numbers musical interludes. Finally, I felt that the film sometimes reveled too much in the humiliation of its characters. Granted, humiliation is a part of life in high school. That is why I liked Jim's sexual encounters with Nadia, the sock, and the pie; while Jim was humiliated, his father would painfully try to explain that "it's perfectly natural." But I felt the movie crossed the line when Stifler slipped Finch a laxative, leading to an embarrassing encounter in the women's restroom. This served absolutely no dramatic purpose. Likewise, the character of Sherman (Chris Owen) achieves total public embarrassment at the conclusion of the picture. Dramatically it is meant to be Sherman's comeuppance, but I felt that it was too harsh - even for him.