American Pie

The thing that got me about this film is that the four boys here would have no issue at all getting a playmate. My favourite was either Chris Klein ("Oz") or "Kevin" (Thomas Ian Nicholas) depending on my mood - but the fact they all get caught up into this almost puerile, faux-angsty existence really bored me. The girls are equally stunning most of the time, and just as (if not more) sexually curious - what's the beef? The script/humour plays to just about every stereotype imaginable: the sporty jocks and the dimwit broads; the parents who react to their offspring's sexual predilections as if they, themselves, had never had a shag in their lives. The characters are so shallow and have enough implausibly intense conversations about scoring that makes you want to reach for a pen-knife to put a notch on the bed-post (or a hole in your own left leg). Seann William Scott and Jason Biggs (OK, maybe I understand why he struggles to get laid) take "Carry On" style innuendo to a new level of cringe-making embarrassment and the ending really does makes the "Graduate" look like Fellini! The production is shamelessly chauvinist - there is no male nudity - but plenty of boobs and I thought it had dated really badly. Sorry, but much of this just made me squirm!

This is a teen sex comedy that finally feels like it exists in the same universe as actual high school in real world. Where Porky's (1981) was crude, cartoonish, and embarrassingly detached from reality, with a pack of horny incels orbiting one token slut while treating girls like an alien species, American Pie gets it refreshingly right. It presents horny teenagers who are still human. The girls aren't props or fantasy objects; they're normal, articulate, and sexually curious without descending into caricature. They talk more like normal people, not like brain-dead incels in Porky's. What makes the movie good is its cheerful honesty. It doesn't treat adolescent horniness as pathetic or weird, but as a universal, awkward rite of passage. The infamous pie scene, the pact to lose their virginity before prom, and the parade of awkward hookups all land because they're rooted in relatable naivety rather than cartoon idiocy. Crude but never mean-spirited, American Pie struck the perfect balance: funny enough to be a massive hit, witty enough to feel like a genuine step forward for the genre. A surprising milestone in late '90s teen sex comedy.