American Pie

American Pie

Even if you haven't seen American Pie, as I hadn't until very recently, you already kind of know it. It's about as simple as a teen sex comedy gets. There's a group of teens that have a pact to lose their virginities, embarrassing parents, a girl who talks a lot about band camp, and something terrible happens to a pie.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, have a wonderfully simple storytelling technique. They believe that between each beat of a story there should be a "therefore" or a "but." Meaning, there should be a reason why each thing happens in a story. Consequences. "This happens, but this happens, therefore this happens" is automatically interesting storytelling. Parker and Stone created this system because they hated movies and TV shows that would simply have "and then" between each story beat. "This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens" is a terrible story, and it's exactly how American Pie operates. Things happen just to happen. The scene with the pie happens (and never comes back), and then the foreign exchange student has an online striptease, (and never comes back), and then, and then, and then. It's bad storytelling.

Okay, to be fair, people in 1999 weren't excited for this movie because of the story. They wanted to laugh and see some sexy things happen. Unfortunately it's not very funny at all, but what's truly bizarre is that there aren't any visible attempts to even be funny. There are no jokes and hardly any zany situations, it's mainly just people kind of hanging out. It's also not particularly raunchy or wild. There's maybe two scenes with actual nudity, and other than the pie there's really not any shocking moments or creatively dirty jokes. It's pretty slow-moving and nothing that particularly interesting happens.

The characters seem far too cool (possibly because they're clearly being played by people in their mid-20s) to be believable as desperate, hormonal teenagers. They're also pretty bland and boring, with several of them being essentially the exact same character. The most "cartoony" characters are the ones that actually feel like real people (Alyson Hanigan's band geek character, Eugene Levy's awkward dad character, and Sean William Scott's horny friend character). The movie essentially focuses on the boring popular kids that don't seem to have any actual problems or discernible personalities instead of focusing on characters that would be far more fun to watch.

There's a unique pitfall that a lot of these teen movies tend to have, which is that when the main characters finally have sex at the end of the movie, it's far too romantic and perfect. High school is horribly awkward, and should always be represented as such. When movies like American Pie or The Fault in Our Stars portray high school intimacy as glamorous, it's clear that these are being written by adults that forgot how that all really went down. The modern movie that nails high school realism in every way, and is essentially just the perfected version of American Pie, is Superbad. That's a movie that shows high school as awkward all the way through, even when they're partying or having sex for the first time. The characters are specific which makes them relatable, the emotions feel genuine which makes you care about what's going to happen, and it's endlessly quotable with deeply funny and unique jokes. High school was not a cool sexy time for anyone, and if it was, those people aren't going to make for particularly interesting movies.

So, as I asked about Titanic earlier, why was this movie a phenomenon? Well, after watching the trailer, it's clear that a wild, fun, raunchy, funny time was promised, and every senior in high school ate it up. At the time, these high school seniors must've seen themselves as the flawless, sexy protagonists the movie presented to them, and then years later still have a nostalgia for that time which is why they keep making American Pie movies. It essentially took advantage of bored teenagers, which I assume it still does to this day. I think it's overrated, dated, and deserves to be hated.

You've probably already seen American Pie, but if you haven't, I'd recommend Superbad instead.