American Pie Presents Beta House
I'm not
sure exactly why I keep reviewing the American Pie series. It
is pretty much bulletproof as far a criticism goes. When a film has no
expectation or even interest in being called good, then what can you really
say? If you get technical, none of them has actually been a well-made,
competent film since the spectacular 1999 original.
However,
I've now seen all six (so far, there will be another one coming
straight-to-video next Christmas as sure as the sun rising and setting) and taken on
their own low-rent level I haven't regretted seeing any of them.
Well, maybe I regretted American Wedding a bit.
That is in
no way saying that the other films were good well-made, cleverly written
or adeptly acted it's just an acknowledgement that if you know what
you are getting into with an American Pie film, it delivers the goods
and can be entertaining.
Drunk,
stupid, horny guys...? Check. Lots of gratuitous nudity of
nubile college-age girls? Got it. Loud, bordering-on-obnoxious
parties? They're there. At least one graphic scene of someone
vomiting and at least one other of someone ejaculating? Present and
accounted for. (Though I wish those two would be put to rest, honestly.)
Goofy, embarrassing, sexually-inappropriate parents? Goes without
saying. A silly feud between our heroes and a group of ridiculously-politicially-incorrect-stereotyped
bad guys which leads to a dumb contest? Rears it's ugly head. A
slumming cameo by comic genius Eugene Levy? That's there, too.
In fact, other than the
franchise title, Levy's character of Mr. Levenstein is the only tenuous
connection to the original film trilogy. Just like the last two
straight-to-video chapters of the saga they had to do back-flips to shoehorn
him into the story line. Still, he is always funnier than his material
and it's always nice to see him, even though he really doesn't have much to
do.
This one continues the adventures of the
characters introduced in last year's The Naked Mile, This is good
because they were much more interesting characters than those in the first
video-only release, Band Camp who seem to have been, mercifully,
retired for good.
The story as if it really matters has
just-barely-past-virginity nice guy student Erik Stifler (John White) and
his horn-dog buddy Cooze (Jake Siegel) go away to college. They decide
they want to pledge the same house as Erik's legendary ladies' man
party-king cousin Dwight (Steve Talley). The pledges are given 50
tasks to win admission most of which are sexual or criminal.
Meanwhile,
the Betas are having a feud with the Geek fraternity and it goes to show
you the level of writing on display that GEEK is their actual name, not just
a taunt by the Betas.
All of this leads to a series of dumb parties,
stupid pranks and eventually a mock Olympiad called the Greek games.
And all throughout, there is lots and lots of nudity. Lots.
So who really cares what some critic thinks?
Teenage and twenty-something boys with snap this up like Red Bull. In
the end, that's all the makers of American Pie Presents Beta House
care about, anyway.
Jay
S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2007
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: December 21, 2007.
