The film concentrates on four boys who make a pact to lose their virginity before their high schoolgraduation. The film's title refers to a scene in the film in which the lead character is caught masturbating with a pie after previously being told that third base feels like "warm apple pie".
Since the conclusion of the American Pie trilogy, featuring the courtship and marriage of the characters Jim Levenstein and Michelle Flaherty, the American Pie name has gone on to be used as an entity similar to the National Lampoon film series. American Pie has spawned four direct-to-dvdspin-off films bearing the title American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005), The Naked Mile (2006), Beta House (2007) and The Book of Love (December 2009).
Four friends at west Michiganhigh school seniors, Kevin Myers (Thomas Ian Nicholas), a confident student with a girlfriend named Vicky (Tara Reid); Chris "Oz" Ostreicher (Chris Klein), a member of the high school lacrosse team; Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs), an awkward and sexually naïve character whose dad (Eugene Levy) attempts to offer sexual advice including purchasing and giving him pornography; and Paul Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas),
a mochaccino-drinking sophisticate, make a pact, at Kevin's initiation,
to lose their virginity before their high school graduation after a
dorky classmate, Chuck Sherman (Chris Owen), claims to have done so at a party hosted by fellow classmate and lacrosse player Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott).
Vicky later accuses Kevin of being with her only for sex, and he must
try and repair his relationship with her before the upcoming prom
night, when the four plan to lose their virginity. He eventually
succeeds. Oz, meanwhile, joins the jazz choir in an effort to lose his
reputation as an insensitive jock and find a girlfriend there. He soon
wins the attention of Heather (Mena Suvari),
a girl in the choir. However, he runs into problems when Heather comes
to learn about Oz's reputation and subsequently breaks up with him,
although he later manages to regain some of her trust. Finch, meanwhile,
pays Vicky's friend Jessica (Natasha Lyonne)
$200 to spread rumors around the school of his sexual prowess, hoping
that it will increase his chances of success. Unfortunately, he runs
into trouble when Stifler, angry that a girl turned him down for the
prom because she was waiting for Finch to ask her, puts a laxative
into Finch's mochacchino. Finch, being paranoid about the lack of
cleanliness in the school restrooms, and unable to go home to use the
toilet as he usually does, is tricked by Stifler into using the girls'
restroom. Afterward, he emerges before many other fellow students,
humiliated and is left dateless. Jim, meanwhile, attempts to pursue
Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), an exchange student from (the former) Czechoslovakia.
Stifler persuades him to set up a webcam in his room so that they can
all watch it together. The plan suffers a hiccup, though, when Nadia
discovers Jim's pornography collection and sits half-naked on his bed to
read it. Jim is persuaded to return to his room, where he joins Nadia,
unaware that he accidentally sent the weblink to the entire school
directory. As Nadia is preparing to have sex with him, he prematurely ejaculates
twice, humiliating himself live in front of the entire school. Shotly
afterwards Nadia leaves school and goes back home now leaving Jim
completely dateless for prom and his likeliness of losing his virginiy
before high-school is over. In his desperation, Jim asks band geek
Michelle Flaherty (Alyson Hannigan) to the senior prom as she is apparently the only girl at his school who did not see what happened.
At the prom, everything seems hopeless for the four boys until Vicky
asks the girl that Chuck Sherman claimed to have bedded about her "first
time." She proclaims to everyone at the prom that she and Sherman did
not have sex at Stifler's party, leaving Sherman embarrassed and making
him wet himself. The revelation takes the pressure off of Jim, Kevin, Oz
and Finch, and they head to the post-prom party with new hope. At the
after-party at Stifler's house, all four boys fulfill their pledge.
Kevin and Vicky have sex in an upstairs bedroom. Vicky breaks up with
Kevin afterwards on the grounds that they will drift apart when they go
to college, with him attending the University of Michigan and her at Cornell University.
Oz confesses the pact to Heather, and renounces it, saying that just by
them being together makes him a winner. They reconcile and wind up
making love together on the porch. Oz, honouring his newfound
sensitivity, never confesses to what they did. Jim and Michelle have sex
after he finds out that she is actually not as much of a band geek as
she let on and she saw the "Nadia Incident" after all. She accepted his
offer to be his date because of it, knowing he was a "sure thing," but
she makes him wear two condoms to combat his earlier "problem" with
Nadia. Jim is surprised to discover that Michelle behaves unexpectedly
aggressively in bed. In the morning he wakes up to find her gone and
realizes that she had used him for a one-night stand,
which Jim thinks is "cool." Dateless, Finch strays downstairs to the
basement recreation room where he meets Stifler's mother (Jennifer Coolidge).
She is aroused by his precociousness, and they have sex on the pool
table. In the morning Stifler enters the room, realizes that his mom has
had sex with Finch and faints, unable to believe that his mom and
"shitbreak" are together. The morning after the prom Jim, Kevin, Oz, and
Finch eat breakfast at their favorite restaurant - with the fitting
nostalgic name, "Dog Years" - where they toast to "the next step".
2000 - WonBogey Awards: Bogey Awards in Platin (Award given to movies which are viewed by five million people in the first 50 days after their release)
In the film, the town is called "East Great Falls", and the high
school sports the same school colors — blue and yellow — along with a
similar mascot — the Trailblazers instead of the Pioneers. The
restaurant hangout, "Dog Years", is based on Yesterdog, a popular hotdog
restaurant in the nearby Eastown neighborhood of Grand Rapids.[4] The "Central Chicks" and "Central" Lacrosse team that East Great Falls plays against is an amalgam of nearby Forest Hills Central High School and Grand Rapids Central High School.[5]
The movie was actually filmed in Southern California, most notably in Long Beach
using Long Beach Unified School District area high schools. Robert A.
Millikan High School whose school colors are blue and gold were used for
exterior shots and Long Beach Polytechnic High School was used for
interior shots, (Los Cerritos, Long Beach, California both schools are located within five miles of the Virginia Country Club and Los Cerritos Neighborhood where Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Donnie Darko were filmed).[6]
Blink-182 make a cameo appearance as the band watching Jim and Nadia during their webcast though drummer Travis is wrongly credited as former Blink-182 drummer "Scott Raynor". Also, when their song "Mutt" is credited, Travis Barker's name is misspelled as "Travis Barkor". The parts were given when Tom Delonge's acting agent reported the film needed a band.
The film received mixed reviews from critics. Stephen Holden of The New York Times felt American Pie was "one of the shallowest and the most prurient teen films."[10] Robert Horton of Film.com wrote that American Pie
"had a few amusing bits, however the audience should strongly note that
the movie is really awful, and that it was not worthy of guilty
pleasure status."[11] Jim Sullivan of The Boston Globe wrote that American Pie is a "gross and tasteless high school romp with sentimental mush."[11] However, Roger Ebert
was more supportive, awarding it three out of four stars. He noted that
"[i]t is not inspired, but it's cheerful and hard-working and sometimes
funny, and--here's the important thing--it's not mean. Its characters
are sort of sweet and lovable."[12]American Pie holds a 58% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes[13] and a score of 58/100 ("mixed or average reviews") from Metacritic.[11]
