Last Week: American Pie:



Ive spent a couple of years listening to ravings about how this movie was something like the Animal House of the 90s. I didnt bother going to see it the first time around, I havent made any effort to rent it, and until last night my resistance to its dubious allure was sufficiently strong. However, I figured that sooner or later Id have to take on this movie, if for no other reason than the fact that it has achieved a remarkable staying power: Wherever film goers gather to discuss comedy, this movie inevitably gets brought up.

Apparently a sequel is even in the works, and the website promoting it has already been posted. Ive learned that the cast from the original will be reunited, which seems like a bit of a stretch. Some of the characters, who were supposedly high school age, looked like they were already pushing 30, as Im rather sure they were. Hollywood is being very secretive about the plot of the film which will be released in August. Still, a film which was made for somewhat less than $10 million and grossed over $100 million is too much for the Hollywood folks to resist, so I am bracing for the sequels impact.

Here are some of the conclusions I came to after watching American Pie.

*Any movie which features a scene with 3 or more male characters sitting in an eating establishment discussing sex is going to suck.

*Lets take that one a step further: Any move which features 3 male characters sitting in an eating establishment discussing anything is going to suck. Probably because, being male, the conversation is going to get around to sex in due order. Sure, there may be interludes where cars and sports are brought up, but you can bet sex is going to come up.

*If high school students were really moronic enough to subject themselves to the humiliations experienced by the characters in this film, school shootings would no longer be major headline news in America. Psychologically shattered teens would be shooting up their classmates 4 or 5 times a day, somewhere across this great land.

*Hollywoods objectification of women has now descended to a level where we have surpassed merely exploiting them in the pages of magazines or latex toys: We can now intellectually compare them to pastries.

*It is simply impossible to make a comedy aimed primarily at teenage audiences which features a single adult character who isnt a blithering moron. Its okay for an adult character to be an essentially well meaning, even kindly moron, but moron they must be.

*It is still actually possible, in this magnificent nation of ours, to separate teens from their wallets by doing a one joke movie.

*It is possible for see-through, plastic beer cups to magically transform themselves into dark blue beer cups, and back again.. I think this can only happen if, (1) The beer cup is originally handled by a male character who (2) hands it to a female character where it magically morphs, then (3) the female hands it back and it becomes a clear beer cup again. I think this entire magical transformation is also only possible if the beer cup in question contains a quantity of semen. I leave it to the Kexkateers to perform the field research on this one, but the mysterious phenomenon above occurs rather early in this film. Watch the scene closely; you cant miss it...well, maybe you cant. My movie watching partner, who has seen this film several times, never noticed the magical incident until I pointed it out to her.

*The Weitz brothers, as directors, are even lamer than the Farley brothers. Perhaps the object lesson here is that any teen comedy directed by a brother team is going to suck...Weitz, Farley, Wayans, its all poison.

American Pie is essentially a comedy about a group of high school boys who set a deadline for themselves to get laid by prom night. This is the films first, essential absurdity. I have vague memories of being a teenage boy, and I still have nearly daily encounters with the creatures. Their typical deadline for getting laid in life is 8 OClock tonight. Most of them are typically bound for daily disappointment, which is good practice for life. Ah...those formative years.

Still, it is that overabundance of frustrated male testosterone that is responsible for nearly every typical male pursuit from small scale forays into the wilderness for the purpose of decimating at least small quantities of the fauna, to World War II. It all leaves me amazed on a daily basis that we have successfully navigated the minefield of possessing nuclear weapons for 60 years.

The ultimate moral of this film? Getting laid is difficult, but when it happens, its pretty good. Sometimes not getting laid can be pretty good too...it all depends. So, Hollywood steals 90 minutes of our lives to tell us that sex is important, but other things are important too. All so that the teenage males who view this film can mostly miss the latter portion of the message, and most likely try to score on their dates after they see the film.