Nicely heated, pretty bland

Rating: Null/10 (27 February 2000)

Yet another teenage rite of passage flick churned out by the Hollywood sausage factory. However this one is low fat, not particularly salty and has quality ingredients. Four senior high school buddies vow to lose their virginity by the end of the high school year and before they go to college. (Naturally, everybody's going to college even if it's on a Lacrosse scholarship). You'd think that wouldn't be hard. Well of course it's not, but the trick here is to keep the audience guessing as to how. The girls (no gays please, this is Middle America) are eager but inexperienced (with the exception of a ridiculously tanned and beautiful exchange student from evil old Eastern Europe who seems to have been at it for years). So are the boys. There's too much talk and not enough action, lots of false starts and misunderstandings.
Naturally, in an update of this hoary old storyline, the Internet get used to broadcast round the campus the hero's fumblings with Ms Czech Republic (shades of Hot Lips Hoolahan and the company dentist in "Mash"). Naturally, the climax (and I use that word advisedly) comes at the after-prom party, and it is a multiple one. Naturally, the parents scarcely seem to be aware of what's happening (except for one who becomes part of the action - "Mrs Robinson" is a potent American myth). Naturally, the guys are types, your ordinary average sex maniac who'll try it with a warm apple pie, the gentle jock, the pimply guy with sophisticated tastes, the other ordinary average sex maniac who actually has a girlfriend but isn't getting very far.
OASM no.1 (he with the apple pie and awful parent) is nicely played with eager desperation by Jason Biggs, who looks a lot like Adam Sandler but is a lot less irritating. Chris Klein as the jock puts in a sensitive performance, as does Mena Suvari (a stand-out in American Beauty as the beauty) as his Kylie Minogue-like girlfriend. The rest of the cast are all pretty ordinary, but it's a nice looking production appropriately filmed in the springtime.
The US education system succeeds brilliantly at one thing, prolonging the dependency and emotional immaturity of adolescence of kids who go to college. They won't have jobs and be free of parents and school, not to say school friends until they are at least 25, probably 30. It is of course all a conspiracy so Hollywood can sell movies like this. That half of the population who don't go to college and instead wind up in McJobs at $5 an hour (if they are lucky) will of course hit reality much earlier. I'm not sure they will find much to relate to here, or all that much to envy, at least on the emotional front.
If you can't be bothered watching this movie just view the trailer - it has most of the funniest bits in it.