Apple pie, anyone?

Following the filthy footsteps of movies like There8217;s Something About Mary and South Park: Bigger, Longer amp; Uncut, comes American Pie, directed by Paul Weitz. It8217;s a hilarious odyssey through the smut-ridden corridors of adolescent sexuality. A blatantly derivative but nonetheless buoyant coming of age tale, the story line takes a familiar direction.

Other moments in the film also revise its genre: there8217;s the endearingly comic addition of the concerned father, Eugene Levy who tries desperately to explain sex in as frank a manner as he can as he encounters his son Jason Biggs in a variety of compromising situations. There8217;s an upsurge of post modern feminism in which the humiliation and objectification is largely directed at the boys rather than the girls, and the refreshing addition of the general attitude toward sex being less circumspect and tittersome than usual.

It8217;s not the most original script in the world, but there are enough variations to make it work and to send itself up in a way that corresponds to its attitude to adolescent masculine sexuality. Yet, despite its contemporary reworking, the fact that it8217;s something of a novelty and a paradox in its use of smut to promote decent morals is it actually a good movie? Morality is just the film8217;s subtext, its deeply buried subtext, which would no doubt have been lost had it not been laced with a never-ending barrage of raunch.

Another paradox, and an indication perhaps of the direction popular films are taking. The overwhelming popularity of vulgar chic would seem to come at a price 8212; a decrease in genuinely good films.

8212; Beatrice Gibson