There seems to have been a real glut of American High School movies recently, many (loosely) based on plundered classics and most of them ending up at the Senior Prom. American Pie has the latter, but it also has an intelligent script that is all its own, as well as a number of visual gags the Farrelly brothers would be proud of.
As the infantile trailer suggests, this is a mix between Porky's, Animal House and There's Something About Mary, but it also has a romantic rather than just a sexually vulgar edge. Four friends, three weeks from graduation, decide they must become men on (or before) Prom Night, and all set about trying, through whatever tactic it takes, to find someone to assist them in fulfilling their pact. Oz is the jock lacrosse star (have I missed an episode where lacrosse left Mallory Towers behind and became macho?) who joins the jazz club in an attempt to appear sensitive. Kevin tries to convince his long term girlfriend that they should go beyond third base, and enlists the help of time-honoured urban legend. Finch, a repressed intellectual with obsessive personal hygiene habits, exploits the teenage lust for gossip. Our hapless hero, Jim, is the only one without a firm plan and all his attempts are thwarted (or discovered) by his concerned father, who in attempting to do the best for his son (buying him Hustler, etc.) succeeds only in causing great embarrassment and extreme amusement.
Cue a large number of very silly and extremely funny jokes involving sexual gratification and household products, such as socks, pints of beer and home-baked pie (apple is the featured flavour but cherry would probably have been more appropriate!) as well as the funniest toilet-dash sequence since Trainspotting. All this plus a lesson on the values of learning how to use e-mail properly and the rewards of helping out exchange students (watch it and see!). This was never going to be a cultural choice, but it is refreshing to find a film that has so successfully balanced such puerile jokes with a decent plot.
Not one to take your mother to, but a much more enjoyable movie than the publicity suggests. Great fun.
As the infantile trailer suggests, this is a mix between Porky's, Animal House and There's Something About Mary, but it also has a romantic rather than just a sexually vulgar edge. Four friends, three weeks from graduation, decide they must become men on (or before) Prom Night, and all set about trying, through whatever tactic it takes, to find someone to assist them in fulfilling their pact. Oz is the jock lacrosse star (have I missed an episode where lacrosse left Mallory Towers behind and became macho?) who joins the jazz club in an attempt to appear sensitive. Kevin tries to convince his long term girlfriend that they should go beyond third base, and enlists the help of time-honoured urban legend. Finch, a repressed intellectual with obsessive personal hygiene habits, exploits the teenage lust for gossip. Our hapless hero, Jim, is the only one without a firm plan and all his attempts are thwarted (or discovered) by his concerned father, who in attempting to do the best for his son (buying him Hustler, etc.) succeeds only in causing great embarrassment and extreme amusement.
Cue a large number of very silly and extremely funny jokes involving sexual gratification and household products, such as socks, pints of beer and home-baked pie (apple is the featured flavour but cherry would probably have been more appropriate!) as well as the funniest toilet-dash sequence since Trainspotting. All this plus a lesson on the values of learning how to use e-mail properly and the rewards of helping out exchange students (watch it and see!). This was never going to be a cultural choice, but it is refreshing to find a film that has so successfully balanced such puerile jokes with a decent plot.
Not one to take your mother to, but a much more enjoyable movie than the publicity suggests. Great fun.