Tuesday 24 June 2008

American Why?


Last night was Grad Ball. The Venga Boys mimed, cheap champagne was drunk and thousands of photos were taken and are now appearing on Facebook. It was fun but very tiring so tonight we decided to chill and watch a film. I'm sorry Tom I should have listened to your advice...

I have just finished watching American Pie: Beta House or as it is known in the far more honest Canadian market American Pie 6: The Final Nail in the Coffin. There are many terrible and confusing aspects to this, the latest entry in the series. The biggest sin is probably its complete lack of anything resembling charm or humour. The first four films (I have yet to witness The Naked Mile and after this I don’t really want to) have some sort of coming of age story acting as the spine for the gross out gags, none of that here. Not a single character learns or grows in any significant way (One guy learns he quite likes female ejaculate but I’m not going to count that). The villains are also horribly miscast. The story centres on a war between Beta House and Geek House. Yes that’s right the geeks are the bad guys. Who elicits more sympathy than rowdy, drunken, misogynist American frat boys? And don’t we hate those geeks with their glasses and… Wait, why are we supposed to hate the geeks? Sure their leader is a dick but what did the rest of them do? What did the guy in the wheelchair do to deserve our scorn? And *SPOILER ALERT* Why are we supposed to celebrate the finale in which the geeks lose their house leaving the frat boys with a new party pad and these poor nerds homeless? Confusingly the film aspires to an 18 rating. You expect a little bit of nudity and naughtiness from your American Pie but this film goes way beyond that with a university populated by almost always topless strippers. I’d say it’s basically softcore porn but I think maybe it goes some way beyond softcore. And finally just why Eugene Levy? Why? You warmed our hearts as Jim’s Dad in the first three films but why do you need to keep coming back? You don’t do anything here. In fact finding a reason for you to be involved and dressed in a toga no less seems to be a strain for the writing talent behind this catastrophe. I think it’s time to move on.

Sheep fucking, legions of young men projectile vomiting over each other and bullet time semen… Where is there to go? You stole our hearts with your awkward humour and Blink-182 soundtrack but it has to stop here. I raise my glass and I say ‘To no more steps.’ (That is unless you want to make a film explaining why Oz wasn’t at Jim’s wedding. Seriously where was the guy? Had they become as annoyed by his cringe inducing antics as we had?)

Peace

Steve

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apparently rotten tomatoes gave it 97.5 %, a tad lower than oscar award winning Norbit.

ScarletBloodBane said...

And I'm sure you didn't lose one single brain cell whilst watching the whole thing.

I see previews of movies like that and Norbit and understand why the rest of the world thinks America is stupid. Compare this humor to Monty Python and it's no wonder. Even a good Japanese game show is highly more entertaining in 5 minutes than 30 minutes of movies like that. Norbit insults black people. Now that I think about it, any American public college slightly resembles American Pie. Only the flip side. The geeks make millions in 30 years, the frats end up with a divorced wife, 2.5 children, and arguing over who's house it is. Yay for society.