This'll Be The Day That I Pie

Year: 2012

Director: Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg

Cast: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott 

Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Well, here we are. I may have skipped way ahead in our Seann William Scott marathon, but of course that was only a pretense to allow me to watch the American Pie movies again. So that brings us to American Reunion, the fourth and probably final film in the franchise, coming a long 9 years after American Wedding. Let’s see if this Pie has gotten stale.

Pro-tip: if a pie has been sitting on a windowsill for a decade, maybe don’t eat it.

In American Reunion, the denizens of East Great Falls return home for their not-quite ten year high school reunion. Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) now have a two-year-old son; Oz (Chris Klein) is back from the dead and a B-list sportscaster/celebrity dance show contestant who’s dating sexy nymphette Mia (Katrina Bowden); Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) has arrived with an array of globetrotting tales; and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) is just happy to be included. They plan to spend a nice, quiet weekend catching up before the reunion. Enter Stifler (Seann William Scott). Frustrated by his job as a temp, he wants to have a wild, crazy weekend just like they did back in high school.

Thus our aged foursome is tempted away from their wives and boring jobs by various women and the rekindling of old flames. Oz and Kevin run into their exes Heather (Mena Suvari) and Terrible Vickie (Tara Reid), who is terrible, Finch woos band geek-cum-sexy barmaid Selena (Dania Ramirez), and Jim must resist the advances of Kara (Ali Cobrin), the lithe now-eighteen-year-old he used to babysit.

And thus they continue to act like they’ve never seen boobs before in their entire lives.

Remember that thing I said about the first American Pie where the women were actually fleshed-out, sexually autonomous characters? Well, apparently the law of diminishing returns also applies to quasi-feminism in raunchy movie franchises. The rule of thumb still holds true in that an American Pie film’s quality is directly proportional to the screentime of Alyson Hannigan’s Michelle, and Reunion takes after American Wedding in the misuse of that iconic character. Once again she is crammed into the role of “Wife,” the woman who must be kept unaware of the boys’ sexual misadventures, as if she wouldn’t have been right in there with them.

And frankly, most of the other female characters don’t even make sense. I get it when Terrible Vickie is terrible, because she’s terrible, but why the hell would Heather get mad upon seeing Oz macking on his live-in girlfriend? Why would Kara have any sexual interest in Jim (no offense, but c’mon), especially with such rapacious determination? And why does Michelle threaten to pack up and move in with her grandmother the second Jim commits a sexual misunderstanding, something that has become – like – a full time career for him at this point? I think this all boils down to the biggest problem with the later films in this franchise: These adults are still written like teenagers.

Obviously adults can get into sexual hijinks, probably even more so than your average high school student. But the motivations here are so childish and crudely motivated, they make way less sense when transplanted from the locker-filled halls of Long Beach Poly to a family cul de sac.

Yeah, I’m still not convinced that we’re in Michigan. Better luck next time, fellas. Oh wait…

At least American Reunion has reassembled its core cast (including cameos from Natasha Lyonne, Shannon Elizabeth, Chris Owen, and a slightly expanded part for a finally famous John Cho, who appeared in all 3 American Pies before hitting it big with Harold & Kumar), so it feels more like a legitimate continuation than the stunted Wedding. And you can rarely go wrong with Seann William Scott’s Stifler, the only character whose actions make any sense as he yearns for the glory days of his teen years. His mugging overreactions and faux charm still hold some juice, once again bringing most of the best laughs by the bucketful.

And American Reunion is funny. At least enough to justify its own existence. The bright colorful characters of the original film have become shabby and patched (especially Eugene Levy as Jim’s Dad, who they can not find a use for here, shoving him into a shopworn dress-up montage that stops the movie cold), but the situations they find themselves in are still reasonably diverting. And this is the first film in the entire dick-obsessed franchise to actually show a penis – if only for a second – so I applaud its audacity at the very least.

Unfortunately though, for the most part American Reunion is just a retread of the lackluster American Wedding (although there are fewer gay jokes, thank heavens), only with Neon Trees on the soundtrack instead of Sum 41. This one-two punch is good enough not to totally sink my esteem for the franchise (those first two are just too good), but I don’t think I’d mind if this was the last slice of Pie. There’s no reason to revisit these characters in their current, destitute state.

TL;DR: American Reunion is a decent years-later followup, though it copies the problems of its immediate predecessor.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 898
Reviews In This Series
American Pie (Weitz, 1999)
American Pie 2 (Rogers, 2001)
American Wedding (Dylan, 2003)
American Pie Presents: Band Camp (Rash, 2005)
American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Nussbaum, 2006)
American Pie Presents: Beta House (Waller, 2007)
American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (Putch, 2009)
American Reunion (Hurwitz & Schlossberg, 2012)

Them Good Ole Boys

Year: 2003

Director: Jesse Dylan

Cast: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott 

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After the bigger, better, jam-packed magnum opus that was American Pie 2, the franchise had no place to go but down. Reducing the cast by at least half and hanging its hat on the hoariest of “waning sitcom” tropes, thus was American Wedding born unto the world in 2003, four years after the world was first exposed to the sexual appeal of baked goods.

I’m surprised it took us so long to notice.

In American Wedding, hapless everyteen Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) has now become a hapless everycollegegraduate and is engaged to his girlfriend, the nymphomaniac band geek Michelle Flaherty (Alyson Hannigan). To help give her the perfect wedding, Jim enlists the help of his friends, Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), the high culture weirdo, and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), who settles comfortably into his destined role as the wallpaper, appearing only to offer vague platitudes and advice, then blandly keen about an offscreen girlfriend. Where’s Oz, you may ask, on this most important of occasions? Well apparently Oz is a figment of your imagination or possibly was a ghost the whole time, because this movie presents not a single scrap of evidence he ever existed.

So, hijinks. Michelle doesn’t want to invite Stifler (Seann William Scott) to the wedding, but Jim is coerced into it. All of Jim’s attempts to impress Michelle’s parents (Fred Willard and Deborah Rush) go hilariously awry. Stifler pretends to be a nice guy and Finch pretends to be a douche in a desperate war for the affections of Michelle’s hot sister Cadence (January Jons). Everything comes to a head as they arrive at the preposterously expensive venue that is described as “up North” from Michigan but is somehow adjacent to an ocean.

Pretty sure you’re not gonna get this view within driving distance.

A trio of rowdy bros get in the way of their earnest friend’s wedding preparations while an anxious fiancée waits in the wings… now, where have I heard that one before? Well, most recently in The Hangover, but this plot trope has been endlessly repeated in comedies since the beginning of linear time. It is trite yet pleasant, overfamiliar yet with the potential for more, but there is one thing it is not: an American Pie plot.

Sure, it provides plenty of opportunities for the old foursome (R.I.P. Oz) to engage in some sexy shenanigans, but the reckless spirit of the franchise is shackled to a set of schmaltzy plot beats and character archetypes that fit with the franchise like square genitals into a round pie. Nevermind the fact that all these characters are far too young and poor to afford the extravagant nuptials the format requires (the only one of them who obviously has a job is f**king Stifler) it yanked away Michelle, the best character in the franchise, cramming her into the role of the disappointed high society fiancée and hobbling her potential to provide the kind of shocking, anarchistic humor she’s known for.

Jim doesn’t fare much better. Although his character’s history is a much better fit for the “dopey schlub who constantly disappoints the prudish parents through a variety of wacky misunderstanding” role, he ceases to be interesting with all his googoo monologues about romance. The only indication that this movie was actually aware of its characters is the personality swap between Finch and Stifler, a joke which relies on the viewer’s knowledge and appreciation of the previous two films.

Luckily, I possess those things in spades.

As a result of this wildly keeling narrative, American Wedding becomes, almost by default, Stifler’s movie. He’s the only character not locked into position, so he’s free to have an arc, and it’s on the strength of Seann William Scott that this movie survives at all. Although his early scenes are overwritten and he flounders as the character has to force his way into a narrative that actively rejects him, he quickly gets the hang of things and delivers a set of solid gags that are some of the most disgusting and ribald in Pie history, all while handling his character’s first real emotional breakthrough. This is where he really proves his worth to the franchise, progressing beyond a one-note characterization into an actual protagonist.

Stifler is by far the funniest character here, for the first time ever, thanks to some sharp line deliveries, and it’s good he’s around because the movie flatlines whenever he’s offscreen. There is a great deal of bloat to American Wedding, with too many scenes spilling over the sides as Jim struggles to win the affections of easily suggestible idiots. These antics are far from interesting, and the faint homophobia that ran through all early-2000’s raunchy comedies bores directly into the core of the humor and spreads through the movie like a poison.

It is redeemed by some solid dialogue and the surprisingly buoyant farce that arises when Jim must attempt to hide evidence of his bachelor party, but for the most part the film is just gross and forgettable, which is something I would never have said about the first two films no matter how wild they got.

Maybe the franchise was fatigued three films in, or maybe it’s not as funny to watch actual adults hyperventilate about the possibility of seeing boobs. At any rate, American Wedding is a totally fine comedy, but it has certainly lost that sparkle that made the originals so damn iconic.

TL;DR: American Wedding is a reduced-fat reiteration that's fun enough but doesn't capture the lightning in a bottle of the first two films.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 949
Reviews In This Series
American Pie (Weitz, 1999)
American Pie 2 (Rogers, 2001)
American Wedding (Dylan, 2003)
American Pie Presents: Band Camp (Rash, 2005)
American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Nussbaum, 2006)
American Pie Presents: Beta House (Waller, 2007)
American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (Putch, 2009)
American Reunion (Hurwitz & Schlossberg, 2012)

The Levy Wasn't Dry

Year: 2001

Director: J. B. Rogers

Cast: Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Shannon Elizabeth

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes 

MPAA Rating: R

1999’s American Pie was a box office smash, making stars of (to varying degrees) Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, and Shannon Elizabeth, and giving Eugene Levy his Leslie Nielsen-esque career realignment. It’s no surprise that it got a sequel with triple the budget, but it is a surprise that American Pie 2 turned out to be the Terminator 2 of teen sex comedies, taking a low budget surprise hit original and ramping it up even bigger and better.

Quick sidebar: Not to get TOO neurotic about a solid comparison, but I do have my doubts that T2 is, as consensus suggests, a better film than The Terminator. I have a soft spot in my heart for he scrappy little sci-fi thriller, but this is all moot considering that both those films are masterpieces and any relative quality is higher or lower by a fraction of a percent. OK. We now return to the review already in progress.

In American Pie 2, everyone’s favorite horny quintet is back from college for the summer! The police are actually doing their job and shutting down house parties, so the boys rent a mansion by the lake for the summer which they can afford by getting jobs as house painters because life was great before the housing market collapsed. Anyway, they all have different goals for their summer, which will come to a head with a huge party at the end of break, although it would be mighty generous to refer to this collection of sex-up daydreams as a “plot.”

Jim (Jason Biggs) wants to hook up with hot exchange student Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) who is returning at the end of summer, but he still has only had sex once – and terribly, by all accounts – so he enlists band geek Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) – a counselor at a nearby camp – to give him some tips. Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) wants to learn the art of tantra so he can experience a new universe of pleasure when he is reunited with Stifler’s Mom (Jennifer Coolidge). Oz (Chris Klein) just wants a minute alone so he can have phone sex with his girlfriend Heather (Mena Suvari), who is studying abroad. Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) continues to be as exciting as a bowl of cold oatmeal, trying to figure out how to be Just Friends with his terrible ex Vickie (Tara Reid). And Stifler (Seann William Scott) just wants to get drunk, have sex, and let the good times roll.

And the filmmakers want to convince us that this is Michigan and not Long Beach, but I ain’t buying it.

I said this movie was the T2 of the franchise and I’m sticking to it. Although it’s even more of a hang-out movie than the meandering original, its sexual hijinks are of a higher caliber, and the one solid throughline (thanks to Jim once again) is the most emotionally satisfying in a franchise with oddly tender wrap-ups, furthering the relationship between Jim and Michelle in an organic, natural way that still allows for wackily shocking sexual misconduct.

And that’s the thing about American Pie 2. Where the original showed naturalistic high school characters, the sequel does the exact same thing, just transplanting them a year into the future. The non-Alyson Hannigan women are much more underserved this time around (Nadia is still just a stick figure with boobs drawn on, Vickie is still terrible, and Heather is piped in occasionally from what I assume is the set of The Musketeer – making stars of your cast makes it difficult to keep them around, so they’re very slightly forgiven) and the gender politics are shakier (though, just like in Dude, Where’s My Car?, the vague undercurrent of homophobia somehow leads Seann William Scott directly into a gay kiss scene, so you won’t catch me complaining – it’s also far less prevalent and aggressive here), but they’re believable college freshmen, trying to act like adults because they’re not in high school anymore, but realizing they still don’t really understand what that entails.

The summer after freshman year was exactly when I started this blog, and I think any rereading of my 2013 material would tell you I can definitely relate.

Where American Pie 2 shows its most massive improvement is the comedy itself, which is much more confident and willing to take risks. The sexual scenarios are turned up to 11, like any good sequel, but they also take the opportunity to diversify the humor, stirring in some equally sophomoric but well-realized slapstick, a couple jokes that arise from sharp dialogue rather than just spoken punchlines to visual gags, and a handful of hijinks that aren’t sex-related at all, making the sexy ones carry an extra punch because the movie has time to breathe.

Also, an American Pie movie’s success is directly proportional to Alyson Hannigan’s screentime, and this iteration of Michelle is the best the franchise would ever see. She’s allowed to develop an actually human angle to the character, keeping the shock gags (which are even brassier –figuratively and literally) but grounding them in something genuine and layered.

The score itself is also much better, descending into spy movie pastiche, noir slinkiness, and cannibalizing any great genre it can to further service the comedy. It’s an unrelentingly fun movie that even survives a grotesquely bloated run time that could sink many a lesser film. Could it do with fewer montages set to Michelle Branch songs? Sure. But in my eyes, American Pie 2 is the perfect evocation of the franchise’s ethos and spirit.

TL;DR: American Pie 2 is an improvement on what was already a raunchy masterwork.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 968

Reviews In This Series

American Pie (Weitz, 1999)

American Pie 2 (Rogers, 2001)

American Wedding (Dylan, 2003)

American Pie Presents: Band Camp (Rash, 2005)

American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Nussbaum, 2006)

American Pie Presents: Beta House (Waller, 2007)

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (Putch, 2009)

American Reunion (Hurwitz & Schlossberg, 2012)

Popcorn Kernels: Great Scott!

I’m impressed Hollywood figured out Seann William Scott so fast. Just one year after his auspicious film debut in American Pie, our dear SWS would appear in not one but two films as a nearly identical character. Today, let’s inspect them both and see how they fare all these years later. Plus, let’s throw in a bonus Scott feature with a twist.

Road Trip

Year: 2000

Director: Todd Phillips

Cast: Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Amy Smart 

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Wacky hijinks ensue when a group of college friends embark upon a road trip to retrieve an incriminating videotape accidentally sent to a girlfriend.

Road Trip is a prime example of the raunchy college movie at its most aggressively average, coasting right along on the most obvious jokes and setups available. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a subgenre I secretly like more than turn-of-the-millennium raunchy comedies, so Road Trip highly amused me.

Bizarrely conceived as a Tom Green vehicle despite the fact that he shares a scene with the film’s other characters maybe once, Road Trip gets a lot of mileage out of the disjointed narrative his inclusion requires. Green’s purpose is twofold: 1) In a framing device either conceived in reshoots or scribbled on a cocktail napkin by a  producer 12 minutes into the American Pie premiere, he narrates the story, smoothing over the more jagged edges of the vignette-based arc all road trip movies are forced into. And 2) he provides some of the f**king weirdest cutaways in motion picture history. 

Presumably under studio mandate to include as much Tom Green as possible, Road Trip constantly cuts away from its routine raunchy antics to Green’s Barry, either alone or with a gaggle of extras. This character is unquenchably deranged and grows more so as the film goes on, expressing fervent interest in a mouse being devoured and participating in chaste yet unspeakably lewd acts with freshmen. This brings a dose of pure, psychotic energy to this otherwise predictable road comedy.

I’m not sure how much I like Tom Green in this movie, but I’m certainly fascinated by him, and that’s just as good. And it’s not like the rest of the film is bad, it’s just not as inherently interesting. There really is a good ensemble here, with Seann William Scott providing the lusty foil to Breckin Meyer’s bland hunk of white bread, Paulo Costamo bringing a rate humanity to a role that somehow asks him to be both a smart guy and a stoner, and DJ Qualls portraying a goofy nerd, the role he was genetically designed in a lab to play. They’re all given a chance to shine, and even if the characters aren’t as well-etched as in other films of this vintage, they each have a distinct arc was we follow them on this cross-country journey.

The humor isn’t quite as ribald as it wants to be (although a certain topless scene is one of the best in the business, both a lusty jab at titillation and a bit of How I Met Your Mother-esque structural humor that implies a slightly unreliable narrator) and the plot is squarely been-there done-that. And there are a couple of detours into crap that wouldn’t even quality as sophomoric. I’ll call it freshmanic. I’m looking at you, fat farting waiter character. But hey! We’ve all been through a lot worse, and Road Trip tops it all off with a feint toward progressiveness, making jokes about male anal fingering and overweight African-American women, but actually honoring them as viable characters and modes of sexual expression. A little bit. So there’s that. Anyway, I had fun.

Rating: 7/10

Dude, Where's My Car?

Year: 2000

Director: Danny Leiner

Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott, Jennifer Garner 

Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Two stoners who can’t remember the events of last night’s party must piece together what happened in order to find their car, their anniversary presents, and a device which will determine the fate of the universe.

I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting much when I sat down to see Dude, Where’s My Car? for the first time, but I certainly wasn’t expecting that it would boast the exact premise of The Hangover a good decade or so ahead of time. I also wasn’t expecting that it would be an entry into the same time-honored genre as Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, the Stoners Go on an Epic Quest with the Lowest Stakes Possible flick. I’m into both of those methods of storytelling, so I was already on the same page as the movie.

Of course, I’m also not a stoner, so without the benefit of being high myself, some of the humor hasn’t aged particularly well. There’s some of the obligatory juvenile material, of course, which is sometimes sublime (their burnout perversion of Abbott and Costello with their “dude” and “sweet” tattoos) and sometimes just too dumb to defend (Jackal the Stoner Dog). But really the biggest issue is a handful of racist and transphobic gags that jangle a bit too harshly. 2000 is a bit too recent to earn the “that’s just how they did things back then” excuse. Even if this does lead to the never-thought-I’d-see-the-day makeout moment between Scott and Kutcher, I could live without it. It’s just too rough to handle in 2016.

I’m giving this the same score as Road Trip because there were more genuine laugh-out-loud moments (like a bit of slapstick using military hand signals that still has me giggling like a loon), but overall it feels less like it earned it. Andy Dick’s cameo in this one (yeah, he was in both movies, because 2000 had no clue what it was doing) is less organic, they keep trying to make the clunky slang term “shibby” happen, and the third act gets too bogged down with its weird commitment to being a sci-fi action movie all of a sudden.

But hey! There is easy chemistry between Scott and Kutcher (although history would give the charming SWS much better scene partners in other films) that drives the zany material with easygoing joy and unexpected warmth. And the world of the film is like a fairy tale, full of delightfully cartoonish characters and a truly out-of-control score that accompanies every little action with a little Mickey Mouse theme. It’s a fun place to spend an hour and twenty minutes, if you can ignore the less tasteful aspects of the comedy.

Rating: 7/10

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Year: 2001

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck 

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Jay and Silent Bob, alleged fan favorite characters from Clerks, take a road trip to Hollywood to stop Miramax from making a movie based on a comic book starring them.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is technically a qualifying entry in two vague Popcorn Culture marathons, but let’s start with the one I have the most interest in at least attempting to complete: Seann William Scott. His role is tiny here, one of the dozens of celebrity cameos that cascade upon this preposterously budgeted movie, yet it doesn’t get lost in the noise. Playing the total opposite of his horndog lothario archetype, he is the only actor not playing a parody of themselves who manages to utilize his established persona and create a character who chafes against that to evoke comedy before speaking a single line. It might be a small part, but it’s a great tile in the mosaic of an undervalued career.

Now for that second, more detestable marathon: Kevin Smith. This is the third Smith film I’ve seen, and while it was my favorite, I dearly hope it’s my last. His View Askew-niverse is just an endless slew of callbacks to movies I didn’t like in the first place, so it’s hard to appreciate the zany world-building at work here. I just don’t grok Kevin Smith’s whole deal, but there is one thing that keeps J&SBSB afloat for me: It’s an early-2000’s Miramax project.

Miramax has a major hit with Scream in 1996, prompting a tidal wave of postmodern meta movies. As a long time opponent of the fourth wall, the wholesale dismantling of it during this period was music to my ears. Jay and Silent Bob came a year after the goofy Hollywood satire of Scream 3, and while that’s my least favorite of the franchise, I love how they’re essentially sister films (aside from being concurrent Miramax productions about the making of a Hollywood film, they both also feature Carrie Fisher, Wes Craven, Ghostface, and Jay and Silent Bob). That was enough to propel me through what was otherwise an enormously forgettable road trip comedy.

I shall be incredibly generous to the film by forgiving the homophobic throughline that rages beneath the entire thing by chalking that off to the comedy whims of the time period, but the thing about fart and boner jokes is that they still need to be structured as jokes. The mere existence of farts and boners isn’t inherently funny. And when the film actually does make jokes, it has a compulsive need to indicate this, ruining an already juvenile joke around a forced “clit” pun by taking it one fantasy-breaking step too far and at one point literally having Jay chuckle and mutter “That’ funny.” There’s no trust in the audience’s intelligence whatsoever, which is probably because it’s a mighty dumb flick itself.

And man oh man is there a dearth of talented actors at the core of this movie. The most grounded, believable performance comes from a freaking orangutan. And when the second best performance comes from the director himself, (Smith doesn’t do much, but he’s up to some clever business in the background of certain shots), you know something has gone terribly wrong. No film should be forced to hang on the shoulders of Jason Mewes, whose explosive overacting desperately clangs against the script, mounting with irritation every time he utters the perplexing, forced catch phrase “Bong!”

Luckily the cameos are generally good to great (especially Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as themselves – though curiously Affleck is lifeless when asked to play an actual character earlier on) and the movie is pretty much all about them. Its vignette structure is breezy enough to be goofy fun, even if so much of it is a swing and a miss by a mile.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1753

Drove My Chevy To The Levy

Year: 1999

Director: Paul Weitz

Cast: Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Howdy, folks! Now that Harry Potter and Halloween are safely out of the way, it’s time to begin yet another vaguely defined Popcorn Culture marathon! That’s right, we’re pulling another topic out of left field and embarking on a mostly chronological journey through the cinematic oeuvre of one Seann William Scott, a comic actor who I actually really like and who deserves a closer look.

Mostly, I just want to see what the hell Bulletproof Monk is all about.

Today, we’ll join our dear SWS where his path first crossed with Hollywood: his feature film debut in 1999’s American Pie. The ne plus ultra of high school sex comedies, American Pie follows the exploits of hapless everyteen Jim (Jason Biggs) and his best buddies Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), the blandest human being this side of Topher Grace, Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), a weirdo who fancies himself mature and sophisticated, and Oz(Chris Klein), a loveable lacrosse player/gentle giant.

After a raucous party in the home of their douchetastic friend Stifler (Sean W. Scott, as he is credited for the first and only time), they make a pact to lose their virginities by prom night, which is in three weeks’ time. Raunchy hijinks ensue as the boys set their sights on the girls who will hopefully help them become men: Jim on the naughty Eastern European exchange student Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), Kevin on his terrible girlfriend Vickie (Tara Reid), Oz on lovely choir girl heather (Mena Suvari), and Finch on the school’s entire female population.

Get in line, ladies…

American Pie is The Odyssey for horny young men. Four high schoolers embark on a grand journey, have many incredible adventures, and arrive at their destination only to find that things have changes irrevocably, in their world and within themselves. Only instead of retrieving golden fleeces, they’re having sex with pies and live-streaming girls changing on a late-90’s webcam that really isn’t that much worse than Skype today. But I digress. What I’m saying is that American Pie has a vignette-driven plot that all services the higher throughline of young men realizing that the vaginas they so desperately want to have sex with are attached to women, and maybe those women are more valuable and interesting than they’re giving them credit for.

Now, I’m not saying American Pie is a feminist tract. The character of Nadia is a soulless automaton/breast dispensary that obliterates that idea like an A-bomb.

Although it’s more like a double-D bomb, am I right fellas? High five!

The story is only ever in service to the thoughts and desires of the young men at the center, but it must be said that a lot of the female characters are uncommonly fleshed-out for this kind of film, especially Heather, Vickie, and Vickie’s BFF Jessica (Natasha Lyonne). They’re not depicted as Rubik’s cubes that need to be solved in order to unlock access to boobs, they’re actual characters, even if they still mostly fit into teen movie archetypes. And Alyson Hannigan’s band geek Michelle’s rapacious sexuality is used as a shock gag here, but it eventually becomes a part of a layered, fairly realistic female high school character as the franchise goes on.

And that’s one of the things about American Pie that makes it so remarkable. Its characters are actually recognizable high schoolers. They’re not fast-talking, hyperintelligent Kevin Williamson creations. And they’re not airbrushed 90210 studs and vixens. They’re awkward, sweaty horndogs that quote nerdy kung fu movies and who want to be adults, but aren’t quite sure exactly what that means. Even Oz, as a jock, is a fumbling, insecure young man still growing into his body and his athleticism. These characters feel like real people you’d see in the halls by your locker, and that’s why their exploits are so captivating. They’re grounded in reality so they’re allowed to go absolutely bugnuts with the sexual misadventures.

Also, Michelle is possibly the best character in cinema history.

But I’ve spent so long diving deep into analysis, I bet you’ve almost forgotten this is a movie about dick jokes. Very good dick jokes, but still. American Pie is a movie that has a comical reaction shot from a monkey, so it’s not exactly Kurosawa. Another reason the jokes and situations land so well is that they’re delivered by some truly committed actors (other than Thomas Ian Nicholas, who seems to be in a perpetual daze, pretty much everybody else is bringing their A-game) like Eugene Levy, who is superb as Jim’s awkward father who attempts to appear sexually open while simultaneously maintaining his buttoned-up Ward Cleaver image.

And I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Seann William Scott in this marathon dedicated to him. Stifler is only ever a one-note character, but his sideline status allows SWS to go cartoonishly big and have a lot of fun. This was his first feature film outing, so the performance is a little rough around the edges, but you can already feel his confidence and charisma bursting through the screen.

Bottom line, I like American Pie a lot. But on this viewing, I couldn’t help but notice the seams of its low budget. First off, the movie’s title looks like it was slapped on in Windows Movie Maker, but there are also a handful of scenes that are a little underlit or otherwise technically flawed. But beyond that, it’s just a delightful teen comedy that I adore from the bottom of my heart.

TL;DR: American Pie is a delightful, reasonably realistic, raunchy teen comedy.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 948

Reviews In This Series

American Pie (Weitz, 1999)

American Pie 2 (Rogers, 2001)

American Wedding (Dylan, 2003)

American Pie Presents: Band Camp (Rash, 2005)

American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Nussbaum, 2006)

American Pie Presents: Beta House (Waller, 2007)

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (Putch, 2009)

American Reunion (Hurwitz & Schlossberg, 2012)

A Sketchy Comedy

Year: 2013

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Movie 43 is sketch comedy, so for better or for worse there's at least a frequent shift in attention. For the laggiest parts of the film this is a boon, but for the few and far between "good" sketches, this means being dragged unwillingly into yet another prolonged scatological gag that is only made worse by the relative quality of the sketch before it.

There are several funny jokes in this comedy movie, thankfully. But finding them is like panning for gold downstream from a cow field. Sometimes you'll find something shiny and glittering but mostly you end up with a panful of crap.

Let's break down some sketches, shall we?

"The Pitch"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common

The awful one in between all the other awful ones.

Much like in the horror anthology series V/H/S, there is an interstitial sketch that links everything together into one big heaving mass. In this case, it's a series of pitches for a movie that Charlie (Dennis Quaid) wants to get made. Studio executive Griffin (Greg Kinnear) shoots them down because, frankly, they're a better fit for awful sketch comedy than an actual feature film.

Desperate, Charlie demands that Griffin get his boss(some rapper called Common)'s approval to greenlight the script at gunpoint. Through remarkably uncomic escalation, tensions with Griffin's boss reach a boiling point and he ends up with the gun pointed right at his boss's head.

On top of this linking sketch being a grueling series of reminders of how terrible each of the sketch ideas are, it starts with an Isabella Rossellini fart joke and goes downhill from there, ending up with forced fellatio and a meta gag that is baffling even by the haggard standards of this script.

The One Good Joke: A cameo by Seth McFarlane pitching a new sitcom called "Hollacaust" is surprisingly self-aware and funny.

"The Catch"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman

Beth (Kate Winslet)'s blind date goes horribly wrong when the handsome Davis (Hugh Jackman) turns out to have balls on his chin. Seriously.

Right off the bat, the movie homes in on its primary goals - getting the biggest stars they can to do the stupidest and/or grossest stuff they can think of. There's a place for grossout humor, but a script where they can't think of anything funny beyond "chin testicles" is not that place.

This film is just an endless cycle of ball joke - reaction shot - grossout that doesn't see fit to even resolve itself with a punchline. It's tedious and further proof that Peter Farrelly burnt himself out on directing There's Something About Mary, because not a single film he's directed since 1998 has had any merit whatsoever.

The One Good Joke: OK, when he's forced to kiss her on the forehead while taking a photo and they end up in her face, it's kinda funny. But it doesn't justify the total lack of direction the sketch has.

"Homeschooled"

Director: Will Graham

Cast: Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Jeremy Allen White

Homeschooler Kevin (Jeremy Allen White)'s parents (Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber) want him to have a totally normal high school experience - complete with emotional trauma.

OK, this one was actually pretty good. Watching this kid's parents act like petulant high schoolers to maintain the loneliness and alienation that are an essential part of the high school experience is a sharp concept.

But the trouble is, as the good gags rolled out and nothing came up to replace them, they kept going further and further in the hopes that audiences would laugh at the obscenity and not notice the absence of humor. This sketch doesn't "end" as much as it just throws in some incest jokes, runs out of steam, and dies panting on the carpet.

The One Good Joke: Kevin's mom knocks his books down in the hallway and calls him mean names.

"The Proposition"

Director: Steve Carr

Cast: Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, J. B. Smoove

Vanessa (Anna Faris) wants Jason (Chris Pratt) to move things to the next level.

Real quick: What is the sketch that you think would spring forth from the fertile imagination of the man behind Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Dr. Doolittle 2, and a short film called Touch a Tit, Save a Tit?

Did you guess something lowbrow and inane? Close.

It's actually much much worse. 

Vanessa wants Jason to poop on her. That's it. No more comedy. After that first reveal, the sketch is just an unending conveyor belt of advice on how best to poop on your girl. Several burritos and laxatives later, he really needs to poop but she wants to savor the moment.

Ha?

I can't even with this one. It's just five minutes of a guy needing to poop and then he gets hit by a car and no I'm not making that up.

The One Good Joke: I don't know if I can even keep doing this.

"Veronica"

Director: Griffin Dunne

Cast: Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone

Neil (Kieran Culkin) is working as a cashier at a grocery store when his ex Veronic (Emma Stone) comes in. There's dirty flirting, and some of what they say is caught on the intercom.

That's it. This sketch is approximately 45 seconds long. There are no discernible jokes and the microphone seems to be able to turn itself on and off at will.

Emma Stone tries her hardest and manages to eke some laughs out of a "joke" that can't even be considered a full-fledged premise. I'm talking failing out of Premise School and huffing crack on the street-level jokesmithy here.

The One Good Joke: It's not even a joke, but Emma Stone's line delivery makes it so. Hence, it would do me no good to repeat it here.

"iBabe"

Director: Steven Brill

Cast: Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Jack McBrayer

A company has created an MP3 player that looks like a naked woman, but there's a dangerous fan in the area where her vagina should be that is harming teen boys who try to get creative.

A sketch invented solely as a medium for showing boobs. Again, there's not so much "jokes" here as there is a table discussion of fans and vaginas. And nobody but Kate Bosworth realizing that this might be a bad idea.

The dialogue meanders around the room and fades into the wind, as neither the actors nor the audience really care what anybody is saying at this point.

The One Good Joke: Their solution is to run a commercial with the tagline "iBabe. Don't f*ck it."

"Super Hero Speed Dating"

Director: James Duffy

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Justin Long, Uma Thurman

Batman (Jason Sudeikis) embarrasses Robin (Justin Long) on a blind date by being supremely inappropriate.

When your superhero parody would be just as funny (funny being a relative term here) if every one of the characters was just a regular person, you've got a problem here. It's just a cheap way to wring laughs by putting a guy in a 99 cent Batman suit and having him talk about vaginas.

And show Superman as a Guido with jizz in his hair.

Another sketch with no ending, it just cuts to black once they run out of things to say.

The One Good Joke: Supergirl (Kristen Bell) can see Batman hiding under the table as he gives Robin advice, not with her X-ray vision as he suspects, but because it's a tiny café table and his butt is sticking out.

"Middleschool Date"

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Patrick Warburton

Amanda (Chloë Grace Moretz) gets her first period in a house full of boys. Periods are gross.

Isn't it weird that this movie and Carrie came out the same year? Chloë is just getting her period all over the place in 2013. Although this kind of humor is played out, some of the boys' attempts to help despite not knowing anything about periods are pretty funny.

Honestly, as a cinematic directorial debut for Elizabeth Banks, she could have done a lot worse.

The One Good Joke: One of the panicking boys proffers a sponge to Amanda.

"Happy Birthday"

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Gerard Butler

In retribution for sleeping with Brian (Seann William Scott)'s girlfriend, Pete (Johnny Knoxville) captures him a Leprechaun (Gerard Butler).

Finally, a breath of fresh air. Instead of scatological humor, this sketch uses violence to disguise the fact that it doesn't actually contain jokes. At least it's a new one.

And to be fair, it does have a punchline unlike most of the other sketches. Unfortunately, the punchline has nothing to do with the actual story, isn't funny, and just... dumb! EVERYTHING IS DUMB.

The One Good Joke: Nothing. Nothing about this is funny.

"Truth or Dare"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant

Emily (Halle Berry) is bored of internet dating so she invites her newest blind date (Stephen Merchant) to a game of truth or dare in a Mexican restaurant instead of small talk.

This one is up there with "Homeschooling" in that it had a really great beginning! Berry and Merchant have really sweet chemistry and the sketch was promising to be quite charming before it turned right down the road of all the others, investing way too much time in crass humor including, but not limited to, a baster full of hot sauce shoved into her vagina and massive breast implants.

It's quite dispiriting, because I was really beginning to like this one.

The One Good Joke: Emily is dared to blow out the candles on a kid's birthday cake before he gets a chance to.

"Victory's Glory"

Director: Rusty Cundieff

Cast: Terrence Howard

A five minute sketch with one joke: Black people are good at basketball.

For five whole minutes.

The One Good Joke: There's only one joke and it's not good.

"Beezel"

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel

Amy (Elizabeth Banks)'s boyfriend Anson (Josh Duhamel) has a cat named Beezel that is in love with him to the point that it attempts murder.

Right when you think the movie's over, they shove this one on in with the end credits and Jesus Christ is it just a train wreck of biblical proportions. Have you ever wanted to see Effie Trinkett get hit by a car and then go to town on a CGI effect with a shovel? OK, maybe.

But have you ever wanted to see a cartoon cat jerk off to pictures of Josh Duhamel in a Speedo while anally penetrating itself?

You'd do well to just turn this film off after "Victory's Glory."

Actually you'd do even better just to avoid the film in its entirety.

The One Good Joke: Josh Duhamel has this on his résumé forever.

Also there's two commercial parodies, but I am not going to talk about them because WHAT THE HELL ARE COMMERCIAL PARODIES DOING IN A MOVIE. NO. NO. I HAVE REACHED THE END OF MY ROPE, GUYS.

The only reason this movie exists is for actors who want to direct to have an opportunity to try it out in a low-risk cinematic environment.

Movie 43 is 90 minutes of celebrity after celebrity being pitched into the brackish waters of bottom-feeding grossout comedy and slowly sinking into the muck. Only Emma Stone, Chloë Grace Moretz, and maybe Seth McFarlane manage to thrash themselves loose by attacking the dialogue with the power of sheer comedy.

Basically, between this film and Gary Marshall's systematic attempts to ruin beloved American holidays, there's nobody left in Hollywood to embarrass.

Sketch Ranking:

#12 "Beezel"

#11 "The Proposition"

#10 "Happy Birthday"

#9 "Victory's Glory"

#8 "The Pitch"

#7 "Super Hero Speed Dating"

#6 "iBabe"

#5 "Veronica"

#4 "The Catch"

#3 "Homeschooled"

#2 "Truth or Dare"

#1 "Middleschool Date"

But only the top 3 are any good at all.

TL;DR: Movie 43 isn't a good film.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 2013

Archive: January 26, 2013

14 More Celebrities You Didn’t Know Were in Slasher Movies

I had a ton of fun writing my original list, but as I thought about it, I realized there were a lot of omissions that I had overlooked at the time in my haste to discuss Johnny Depp’s midriff. So now I present an addendum.

Read on in horror and see all your favorite stars slum it. Hey, you gotta pay your dues.

Round 1: Leatherface Double Take - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Franchise

Viggo Mortensen

Famous for: The Lord of the Rings, A History of Violence, The Road

Skeleton in the Closet: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III(1990)

Our dear friend Aragorn is the first of many now-famous stars to have rubbed shoulders with our friend Leatherface. His character’s name also wins the award for Least Effort Put Into a Pun in a Horror Film: Tex. True story.

Renée Zellweger

Famous for: Jerry Maguire, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Chicago

Skeleton in the Closet: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation(1994)

This woman has won an Oscar for her performance in Cold Mountain.

This woman has dated Jack White.

This woman was once engaged to Jim Carrey (OK, maybe that one’s not so good to brag about).

And months before she hit the big time, she starred in this grubby little horror reboot that almost never saw the light of day.

Matthew McConaughey

Famous for: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2005

Skeleton in the Closet: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Twist ending: He’s insane. 

Following Renée’s footsteps, McConaughey starred in TCM:TNG, became famous shortly afterward, and became the bane of Hollywood reporters before the invention of spellcheck.

He actually fought to keep the film out of theaters, effectively killing any slim chance it had to make money.

Jessica Biel

Famous for: 7th Heaven, The A-Team, Valentine’s Day

Skeleton in the Closet: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

This one isn’t too embarrassing, the movie was actually pretty good, and it’s only Jessica Biel. But still, worth noting.

Matt Bomer

Famous for: White Collar, Magic Mike

Skeleton in the Closet: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

And instantly legions of teenage girls become Leatherface fans.

Round 2: Rap ‘n Slash - A Brief History of Rappers in Horror Cinema

Ice-T

Famous for: “O.G: Original Gangster”, “6 ‘N the Mornin’ “, “Colors”

Skeleton in the Closet: Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Ice-T stars as rap producer Mack Daddy whose success comes about by harnessing the leprechaun’s magical flute, which makes people appreciate rap music. I can’t believe I just typed that sentence. 

LL Cool J

Famous for: “Mama Said Knock You Out”, “Doin’ It”, “I Need Love”

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween H20 (1998)

The Halloween franchise was getting pretty desperate at this point, already having retconned four films to bring back Jamie Lee Curtis, so it makes sense that they would use this kind of novelty casting.

Dirty little secret: The movie, directed by Friday the 13th: Part 2’s Steve Miner, is actually pretty darn good.

Busta Rhymes

Famous for: “I Know What You Want”, “Break Ya Neck”, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Now this is desperate. Busta Rhymes stars as the obnoxious host of a web series who traps a group of teenagers in Michael Myers’ old house and broadcasts their brutal murders online. 

He seems like a standup fellow.

Honorable Mention: Tremaine “Trey Songz” Neverson, who appeared in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), earning him a place in both rounds 1 & 2. Unfortunately, his film is too recent to be considered for this category. Better luck next time.

Round 3: Bikini Death Toll - The (Not So) Final Girls

Tyra Banks

Famous for: America’s Next Top Model, The Tyra Banks Show

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

To top things off with what is one of the most awful movies in a franchise that previously featured the magic of Stonehenge turning children’s heads into bugs, Tyra Banks is here. She plays Busta Rhymes’ assistant, and isn’t even murdered onscreen. What a shame.

Amy Adams

Famous for: Enchanted, Julie & Julia, The Muppets, being perfect

Skeleton in the Closet: Psycho Beach Party (2000)

That’s her in the middle! Amy Adams is a gem in this quirky slasher sendup that’s actually pretty great. She is far too adorable to play her role, a sex-crazed vixen who tries to stab her best friends in the back and win the affections of Nicholas Brendon (whom she also appeared with in a season 4 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Katherine Heigl

Famous for: Grey’s Anatomy, Knocked Up, 27 Dresses

Skeleton in the Closet: Valentine (2001)

This was a good one. There’s some quality movies on this list, weirdly enough. At least on the very narrow adjusted scale of slasher grading. David Boreanaz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Angel) stars as the loveable alcoholic boyfriend, and Katherine Heigl is mowed down within the first ten minutes.

Not to be confused with the 2010 romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, although I’d love to see the look on that horrified Heigl fan’s face.

Round 4: OK Seriously? - These Guys?

Leslie Nielsen

Famous for: Airplane!, The Naked Gun series

Skeleton in the Closet: Prom Night (1980)

This actually happened. Nielsen is the fourth lucky star on this list to have worked alongside everyone’s favorite Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis. If you don’t like Jamie Lee Curtis, you don’t exist.

In Prom Night, Nielsen plays the principal of the high school which is host to both the prom and a teenage blood bath. Did I mention he’s Curtis’s father? Glorious.

Also, be sure to check out the fantastically overlong dance breakdown in the middle of the film.

God, I love the 80’s.

Seann William Scott

Famous for: American Pie, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Dukes of Hazzard

Skeleton in the Closet: Final Destination (2000)

Steve Stifler’s at it again in this zany teen comedy! After a botched European vacation, the Stiffmeister hangs around town with his wacky friends until he is abruptly decapitated by flying shrapnel.

David Copperfield

Famous for: being a magician

Skeleton in the Closet: Terror Train (1980)

Jamie Lee Curtis gets around. Terror Train is another entry on the list that is unexpectedly high quality. It might actually even be considered “good” in terms of actual real life movies.

Featuring a New Year’s train party/murderfest and about 10 minutes of David Copperfield alternately being creepy and showing off, Terror Trainperfectly sums up the slasher boom of the early 80’s.

In conclusion: Nobody is safe. One by one, the slasher genre will claim all of your favorite stars. You never know who might be next!

Word Count: 1170