02 August 1999

A Slice of Pie, A Look at... American Pie - THE COMMENTARY

By Joseph Planta

Jason Biggs headlines a teenybopper cast that explores the social climate that surrounds teens in this the last year of the 1990’s, the century for that matter. It’s a film that, at its core, reflects the values of this generation when it comes sex and love. American Pie has been getting a healthy box office reception and joins the list of low brow schlock that has flooded movie theatres across North America. American Pie is lewd, crude and full of flatulence. It attempts to be the There’s Something About Mary of the summer of ‘99, but it fails, fails miserably. It’s nothing like Mary, it pales in comparison and it isn’t chock full of the laughs we’ve come to expect. It follows the last 3 weeks of 4 boys in high school, who make a pact to loose their virginity by prom night. They try everything and use calculated situations to get a girl into bed, like the jock character, who takes into sensitivity and stuff like that. The film is full of references to urinating, lewd behavior, oral sex and of course, apple pie. We go into the first few moments of the film, with the movie showing us the calculated side of this shady group. Are we supposed to hate them or are we suppose to be rooting for them? By the end of the movie when they all get laid, the filmmaker makes the viewer feel for the redeeming qualities in these characters.

It has its moments, but what really separates the crap from this movie and the crap from There’s Something About Mary, is that The Farelly Brothers were unapologetic. A Damascus-like change in their behavior is reprehensible. Having us feel good for the characters near the end of the movie, is unimaginative and really tasteless. If a movie is going to cater to the lowest-common denominator, then cater all the way. Don’t change the energy of the plot and most of all do not change the pace. There’s a lot of material that they could have milked. At least, Mary did that and did it shamelessly. We go in thinking it’s a Mary-type picture, and it is for a while, but then makes this silly change in direction, That hurts it’s charm and all of the possiblities.

The one good piece in the film was where one of the characters gets one of his buddies, mom on her back. They seduce each other with an ounce of charm, borrowed from The Graduate. Anne Bancroft’s seduction of Dustin Hoffman, 32 years ago has a rebirth in this film’s one scene. Other than that, American Pie is a slice of film that you can pass on, for sure.

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