American Pie (1999)
sex comedy
directed by : Paul Weitz
featuring : Jason Biggs - Shannon Elizabeth - Alyson Hannigan - Chris Klein - Natasha Lyonne
running time : 1 hour 35 minutes
It's said that most American men think about sex once every two or three minutes, but this statistic would seriously underestimate the horniness of Jim (Jason Biggs), a high school senior in suburban Michigan. Jim is thoroughly obsessed with sex, a fact of which his parents become aware when they discover him performing the sin of Onan with a gym sock while watching scrambled pay-per-view porn. Jim's buddies Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), and Oz (Chris Klein) are no less anxious to relieve themselves of their virginity, so they all make a pledge: they will go to bed with a woman in the three weeks before senior prom or die trying. Kevin appears to have the advantage, since he already has a girlfriend, Vicky (Tara Reid), but before he ventures into the Final Frontier, Kevin is urged to consult "The Bible," a hand-written how-to manual possessing erotic wisdom passed down through the ages. Oz is a good-looking jock who is actually a nice guy — which is part of the problem, since he has his heart set on a nice girl, Heather (Mena Suvan), who does not seem the type to leap into bed within 21 days. Finch has no immediate prospects, though Jessica (Natasha Lyonne) is in a position to know if those rumors about him are true. And Jim is a truly hopeless case — after his attempted seduction of beautiful Czech exchange student Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) turns out to be a disaster, he ends up going to the prom with Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), an annoyingly chatty band geek who does, however, have a fascinating story about a flute. American Pie was the directorial debut of Paul Weitz who, along with his brother Chris Weitz (who served as producer), previously wrote several screenplays, including Antz and Madeline (where they presumably worked all their wholesome ideas out of their system).

Arriving in the summer of 1999, American Pie benefited from its combination of two trends: the new wave of teen movies and the Farrelly-inspired gross-out comedy. To the former it added nudity and sexual explicitness; from the latter it subtracted wit and timing. A hit with audiences, and garnering a surprising amount of positive press, its appeal seems to have been based primarily on an ability to be shocking in the generally prudish climate of '90s filmmaking. What in the '80s would have been simply an above average T&A comedy somehow became an event, and Elizabeth, an actress of limited ability, became a minor star simply by taking off her shirt. Still, it's a film not entirely devoid of appeal. Klein and Biggs both turn in enduring performances, as does the under utilized Eugene Levy as Bigg's befuddled father. Adam Herz's script coughs up some funny moments here and there, but the film as a whole is an awkward mess that at one point stops cold for an elaborate diarrhea gag. There's also an unmistakable air of calculation about it. Probably realizing they were filling a void, the Weitz litmus test at any given moment seems to be the material's ability to generate discussion amongst pubescent middle-schoolers, a sure way to create attention, but hardly the standard by which to create an enduring comedy — of the teen, gross-out, or any other variety.