First off, let me start off by agreeing with the majority of folks here. This is not an American Pie movie as you would understand it.
For generations now, American teens have had the "awkward sex comedy" film, complete with relatable tropes. Seems that every decade we need something to help young men laugh at the awkwardness of puberty and for people who've been through it to cringe retroactively. A young man is cursed with raging hormones and a gangly awkwardness and lack of social skills that makes approaching someone and saying "please allow me to insert part of myself into you" extremely difficult.
This movie for various reasons follows a Four Horsewomen team of brash Joan Jett-like tough girl Stef Stiffler, Sexually Active In A Relationship Kayla, Debate Team Future President Lovable Chubby Michelle, and Still A Virgin Holding Out For Mr. Right For Her First Time Annie. They end their latest break bemoaning their problems and make a pact. By Homecoming they will meet their sexual goals. If this was a typical sex comedy the goal would be "get laid" but that's really easy for most women so it's "make your first time special with the man you love", "find a guy who treats you right" and so forth. Right away we're not lookingat a sex comedy, it's a rom com.
It's hard to genderflip the sex comedy, because the vast majority of women have the opposite problem, namely that they're constantly bombarded with sexual interest but not necessarily by the top guy they want.
Which is why, by definition, this turns into a girl power movie where the girls are not happy with the sexual attention of adults, creeped out by being ogled by the majority of the school's male population, which they deem to be "rats", I think part of the invective against it by most reviewers here is that male-oriented ones speak to the problem of starvation and by that metaphor this one is "all four of us want the last slice of cake, whatever shall we do?"
Because eventually all four realize that to satisfy their pact in the way they imagine, it's to get with the just-transferred-in-the-last-semester-of-school-ever Adonis named Grant.
The biggest problem with the movie is that movies really thrive on the concept of a character overcoming a problem, and the other three just simply decide to "settle". Disturbingly, for all the movie crows about getting rid of patriarchal interference in what's messaged to girls, see if you can guess which player - the rowdy sexually aggressive girl, the relationship-sex-three-times-a-day girl, the chubby awkward one with a literal foot locker full of sex toys, or the sweet, virginal intact good girl is the one who gets the prize of the best guy at the end. This isn't a spoiler, they practically ship the couple from the jump.
What would be a better movie is one that speaks to the genuine awkwardness girls face. Except that it would probably involve menstrual gags, period-induced diarrhea, physical mishap and so forth that no censor would allow onto the screen. The suggestion of Judge Reingold's character in Fast Times engaging in self-abuse at the sight of a girl is one thing. A visual gag involving a very real world problem of... how can I put this delicately... "will it fit?" was scrapped.
I am waiting for a film that my female friends scream at the screen going YES YES OH MY GOD YES UGH CRINGE but so far that hasn't happened. Though the director sought out female writers, female assistant directors and so forth and built a soundtrack out of you-go-girl all girl acts, if you're going to do a sex comedy, it needs to be less Bananarama and more Wendy O. Williams. (Not the talk show host, the lead singer of the Plasmatics).
I want that film to be made, for the next generation of girls. So far all they've had is someone trying to pound their square peg into a male-troped round hole.
For generations now, American teens have had the "awkward sex comedy" film, complete with relatable tropes. Seems that every decade we need something to help young men laugh at the awkwardness of puberty and for people who've been through it to cringe retroactively. A young man is cursed with raging hormones and a gangly awkwardness and lack of social skills that makes approaching someone and saying "please allow me to insert part of myself into you" extremely difficult.
This movie for various reasons follows a Four Horsewomen team of brash Joan Jett-like tough girl Stef Stiffler, Sexually Active In A Relationship Kayla, Debate Team Future President Lovable Chubby Michelle, and Still A Virgin Holding Out For Mr. Right For Her First Time Annie. They end their latest break bemoaning their problems and make a pact. By Homecoming they will meet their sexual goals. If this was a typical sex comedy the goal would be "get laid" but that's really easy for most women so it's "make your first time special with the man you love", "find a guy who treats you right" and so forth. Right away we're not lookingat a sex comedy, it's a rom com.
It's hard to genderflip the sex comedy, because the vast majority of women have the opposite problem, namely that they're constantly bombarded with sexual interest but not necessarily by the top guy they want.
Which is why, by definition, this turns into a girl power movie where the girls are not happy with the sexual attention of adults, creeped out by being ogled by the majority of the school's male population, which they deem to be "rats", I think part of the invective against it by most reviewers here is that male-oriented ones speak to the problem of starvation and by that metaphor this one is "all four of us want the last slice of cake, whatever shall we do?"
Because eventually all four realize that to satisfy their pact in the way they imagine, it's to get with the just-transferred-in-the-last-semester-of-school-ever Adonis named Grant.
The biggest problem with the movie is that movies really thrive on the concept of a character overcoming a problem, and the other three just simply decide to "settle". Disturbingly, for all the movie crows about getting rid of patriarchal interference in what's messaged to girls, see if you can guess which player - the rowdy sexually aggressive girl, the relationship-sex-three-times-a-day girl, the chubby awkward one with a literal foot locker full of sex toys, or the sweet, virginal intact good girl is the one who gets the prize of the best guy at the end. This isn't a spoiler, they practically ship the couple from the jump.
What would be a better movie is one that speaks to the genuine awkwardness girls face. Except that it would probably involve menstrual gags, period-induced diarrhea, physical mishap and so forth that no censor would allow onto the screen. The suggestion of Judge Reingold's character in Fast Times engaging in self-abuse at the sight of a girl is one thing. A visual gag involving a very real world problem of... how can I put this delicately... "will it fit?" was scrapped.
I am waiting for a film that my female friends scream at the screen going YES YES OH MY GOD YES UGH CRINGE but so far that hasn't happened. Though the director sought out female writers, female assistant directors and so forth and built a soundtrack out of you-go-girl all girl acts, if you're going to do a sex comedy, it needs to be less Bananarama and more Wendy O. Williams. (Not the talk show host, the lead singer of the Plasmatics).
I want that film to be made, for the next generation of girls. So far all they've had is someone trying to pound their square peg into a male-troped round hole.