There doesn't seem to be anything that is off limits for a Hollywood comedy these days, short of outright pornography.
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Teenage sex comedies come and go. A few are funny; most aren't; but they all make money for obvious reasons. "American Pie" came along shortly after the success of "There's Something About Mary," a film filled with outrageous and uproariously funny material, giving the producers of "American Pie" a precedent for even more gross-out behavior in their film. The result is not so much offensive as it is spectacularly ho-hum.
The plot concerns four high school senior boys who make a pact to lose their virginity by the time they graduate. But they agree it has to be honest, "consensual sex; no prostitutes." Funnier to me than the pedestrian nature of their agreement is that in 1999 movies could still depict four teenage seniors who were still virgins. Sarcasm aside, the four boys are well meaning and there are no crude undercurrents to their intentions. Each would like to develop a serious, substantial relationship with a girl, culminating in an intimate experience. Despite their personal attractiveness, though, they have had no luck up until now with members of the opposite sex.
Jim (Jason Biggs) is the most appealing of the group and in some ways the unluckiest. When he is told that "getting to third base is like warm apple pie," he experiments by sticking his finger into one of his mom's freshly baked pastries, which, of course, leads to the inevitable episode that provides the movie its name. "It's not what it looks like," he tries to explain to his father, who interrupts him in the act. The second boy, Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), is the only one of the group with a steady girlfriend. But she has never let him go all the way with her, surprising considering the other things she does with him, which among the youth of my generation would have been regarded as even more off limits than conventional copulation. Post-Clinton ethics, no doubt.
The third boy, Paul (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who looks like a young Mr. Bean, decides his approach to the issue is to establish a reputation for himself as a stud and have girls ask him out. He pays a friend, Jessica (Natasha Lyonne), $200 to start rumors about his sexual prowess, ending, naturally, in disaster. The last of the four boys is Chris, known as Oz, a lacrosse-playing jock who wants to learn to be more sensitive. His answer is to join the glee club where he meets the girl of his dreams. The film's most touching scene comes when Chris ditches the big game for the girl. The stories of these various young men are seamlessly intertwined, the best contribution director Paul Weitz and writer Adam Herz make to the project.
The fact is, had the filmmakers found more that was genuinely funny and relied less on vulgarity for cheap laughs, this might have been a winning picture after all. But, then, it probably would not have sold as many tickets. So, the movie is laced with things like semen in a glass of beer; private sex unintentionally broadcast over the Internet; repulsive toilet gags; and the seduction of an older woman by a younger man (a reversal of "The Graduate" situation, to which the movie pays homage by underscoring the scene with the song, "Mrs. Robinson"). Is it really an indication of our civilization's moral progress when thirty years ago an older woman seduced a college graduate, and now a high school student seduces an older woman?
Yet it's not as if the filmmakers were incapable of generating real humor. Eugene Levy as Jim's dad, trying desperately to remain cool while informing his son of the facts of life, is not exactly an inspired creation but is at least whimsical. Also, the wonderfully cheesy band playing at the grad-night prom should bring a smile to anyone's face.
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