Film

American Pie (1999)

Director: Paul Weitz

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Notorious for the ludicrous masturbation scene which gives the film its title, this Farrelly-like jock comedy begins as it means to go on, with Jim (Biggs) discovered by his parents unscrambling cable porn and sporting a sock on his 'third foot'. Though Jim and his buddies make a pact to lose their virginity before the climax of the graduation ball, the wanking continues apace. The adolescent male is an ugly thing to behold, but ripe for comic humiliation. Weitz's film is enough to put you off having kids. The strange thing is, while it's told very much from the boys' point of view, the humour is almost entirely at their expense, and actually quite sensitive to a woman's needs. If this isn't feminist, exactly, at least it's laddism reconstructed. Nevertheless, it's still a crude piece of work, spottily acted and directed, albeit lifted by two or three outrageous set-pieces.

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