American Pie (1999) Review

Time: 95 Minutes
Age Rating: Offensive Language and Sex Scenes
Cast:
Jason Biggs as James “Jim” Levenstein
Chris Klein as Chris “Oz” Ostreicher
Thomas Ian Nicholas as Kevin Myers
Eddie Kaye Thomas as Paul Finch
Mena Suvari as Heather Gardner
Tara Reid as Victoria “Vicky” Lathum
Seann William Scott as Steven “Steve” Stifler
Eugene Levy as Noah Levenstein
Director: Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz

A riotous and raunchy exploration of the most eagerly anticipated — and most humiliating — rite of adulthood, known as losing one’s virginity. In this hilarious lesson in life, love and libido, a group of friends, fed up with their well-deserved reputations as sexual no-hitters, decide to take action.

American Pie is a classic 90s comedy movie, which a lot of people love. It was a big thing at its time. Unfortunately, I have to say that I don’t like this movie at all. Aside from one character, I found nothing funny about this movie. Adding to the lack of actual funny jokes is the fact that I just couldn’t care about anything in the movie, watching American Pie just ended up being a frustrating chore, with barely anything enjoyable. American Pie is one of the most frustrating ‘comedies’ I’ve seen so far.

So why do I dislike this movie so much? Well the main reason is that quite simply, despite this movie being a comedy, I didn’t find anything funny. As I said earlier, there is one character I found funny (which I’ll go into later). Any scene without this particular character however, I found at best unfunny and at worst, completely cringe, obnoxious and forced. It often relies on quite a lot of gross out humour, while it didn’t particularly bother me, it really didn’t leave an impact on me in any way. The humour just came across as forced. On top of that, I couldn’t really like or care about the characters, so not only do I find this movie completely unfunny, I don’t even like (most of) the characters. To make matters worse, near the end of the film, the film tries to actually have a message/moral but minutes after they deliver the moral of the story, they ended up messing it up and contradicting their own message. All I will say is that Superbad delivered on that message a lot better.

There was only one character I liked throughout the entire film and that’s Jim’s (Jason Biggs) father, played by Eugene Levy. He is just so awkward and the way he acted, his personality, the way he reacted to every situation, I genuinely found him very hilarious. Unfortunately, he’s not a main character, which is a shame because I disliked pretty much everyone else in the movie. Everyone was basically a stereotype, none of them were funny, likable, or entertaining at all. I couldn’t even care about any of them on a deeper level. None of them are particularly memorable either, their personalities are so similar that they all sort of blend together. So aside from the father character, there was nothing good at all about the characters in this movie.

There are many beloved movies that I don’t really like but I don’t usually dislike them, at worse I don’t like them but they don’t frustrate or irritate me. American Pie is an exception. I found it obnoxious and unfunny, any scene without this one character really didn’t hit for me. So I didn’t find the movie funny, and I couldn’t care on any level for these characters of the story. Not to mention they somehow manage to contradict their own message. With all of that there’s not really much to like about American Pie. I can’t really say whether you’ll like it or not as people have their own tastes and preferences, especially when it comes to comedy. So there might be a chance that you’ll like the movie. But I’ll just repeat a point I said previous, for what American Pie was going for, Superbad did it a lot better. American Pie’s only plus is one funny supporting character, aside from that it is completely unfunny and irritating.

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