The Next Generation, the Same Exact Problems

We’re now into the fourth of the side films for the American Pie series before we finally get back to a mainline entry with 2012’s American Reunion, and these films continue to underwhelm. I understand that we can’t expect anywhere near as much from a direct-to-video film as a full, studio production, but comedy really isn’t that hard. You get someone with half a wit to write some good jokes in a loose script, find some up-and-coming comedians looking for their big break, and put a couple of Million into the production and, boom, you have a funny film. Universal did all these steps except the part where jokes were needed, and it leaves us with by far the least funny of the American Pie Presents films yet.

We’re also at a point where these films are really starting to stretch the credulity of the setting. Four movies in and the Stifler clan feels far too large, with too many cousins, uncles, former roommates, and the like all running around, year after year, getting into shenanigans. We at least finally don’t have a Stifler in the lead role, with this fourth American Pie Presents acting as something of a soft reboot, taking us back to basics for a tale of high school sex parties… but still. How many times can we have the same kind of story happen at East Great Falls High before someone says, “why are all these dumb bros getting into unrealistic sexual situations?” These films just don’t work.

I won’t deny, it’s been a struggle to get through these direct-to-video films. While I’ve watched some truly awful movies over the years – go check out my run through all the The Land Before TimeThis series, first started with a classic animated film by Don Bluth, tells the continuing adventures of five dinosaur kids back in the Prehistoric era. movies as a clear example – there’s a difference between outlandishly awful and just poorly made. At least the Land Before Time films were so amateurishly awful in their writing, acting, and, eventually, animation that you could ignore most of the production issues and just settle for hilariously stupid films. American Pie Presents: The Book of Love doesn’t look bad. It’s not poorly acted. It tries. But it tries with a script that is so dumb, so repetitive, and so tired that it’s not even fun to watch. These direct-to-video continuations of the franchise took a long break after this film, and having sat through it, I can now understand why.

Rob Shearson (Bug Hall) is (like most men in this film series) a virgin. This is a failing in his mind as sex is all anyone talks about at East Great Falls High School. He and his buddies – fellow basketball player Nathan Jenkyll (Kevin M. Horton) and Marshall "Lube" Lubetsky (Brandon Hardesty), who thinks he’s a ladies’ man but really isn’t – all desperately want to get laid but, for various reasons, simply can’t. Nathan’s girlfriend, Dana (Melanie Papalia), took a pledge to be abstinent until marriage (despite the fact she’d slept with six guys before). Lube has had a crush on hot girl Ashley (Jennifer Holland) since forever, but she thinks he’s just a gross nerd. And Rob has been in love with his best friend, Heidi (Beth Behrs), but never could work up the courage to tell her.

The events of the film really get into motion when Heidi confesses to Rob that she wants to lose her virginity and, at this point, just figures, “why not, I should just lose it now, right?” Rob agrees and, at a school dance, he tries to hook up with her but loses track of where she goes. He finds her in the library with some random guy, and in his shock accidentally causes a fire. This leads to the library getting flooded from the sprinkler system, and both Rob and Heidi getting in trouble. They’re forced to clean up the library and, in the process, Rob finds a secret book hidden under a shelving unit: The Book of Love, a tome written a century earlier that, over time, many of the men of East Great Falls High had added to, making something of a Bible for sex. Unfortunately the Book took heavy water damage and now Rob and his friends, while learning what they can from the book, have to restore it to its former glory, all in the hopes that it can teach them how to stop being virgins.

I think something that really bothered me about this film, and which has bothered me about a few of these, is the characters’ obsessions with losing their virginity. For the characters in many of these films – American Pie, American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile, and this one – the primary motivator for all of the leads is sex. They have to lose their virginity because, somehow, being a virgin makes them less of a person. Having been a teen once, I just don’t see that as a realistic depiction. While sure, back then, I would have been happy to have sex, being a virgin wasn’t an all consuming issue for me like it is for these teens. They don’t worry about classes, or sports, or even trying to get girlfriends first and maybe make connections with the opposite sex. It’s just about losing their V-card and nothing else, and that makes them seem not only unrealistic but also shallow and vapid.

I think the plot was acceptable once, back in American Pie (even if I have many other qualms with that film), but it feels like, by this point in the franchise, the films are really starting to repeat themselves. A bunch of teens hate the fact that they’re still virgins, a Stifler makes fun of them for it, the one guy with a girlfriend can’t get into her panties for a contrived reason, and they fail and fail until, through no real effort on their own, they succeed and get to get laid. American Pie Presents: The Book of Love really is just the first American Pie all over again, but worse, and it makes it hard to care about anything going on, especially when it sticks to the formula so specifically that you can guess all the major events of the film from the very first scenes.

The one twist here is that none of these characters (outside the random Stifler who hosts the parties they all go to) are related to the main characters of any of the previous films. In the past few of these we were focused on the Stiflers, with Eugene Levy’s Noah Levenstein showing up to provide support and advice for the characters. Eugene Levy is here as his character, but it feels like a version brought in from a different film, while everyone else in the movie is a pale imitation of characters we’ve seen before, without being given any real reason why we should care about them.

Noah Levenstein in particular stands out to me for how this film does him dirty. In the previous movies it sometimes felt like he was shoehorned in, but at least they made good use of Levy’s comedic chops to sell his scenes. Yes, it was weird that he went from Jim’s goofy, well-meaning dad to the creator of the Naked Mile, then the head of the Beta House back in his day, and also their lawyer, but now he’s not a lawyer but a carpet salesman, and he also doesn’t give out any sage advice, instead being the guy that created the Book of Love so he, and all other men, can be horndogs. The films lose all sense of who this character was and what he was supposed to provide, and he’s not even funny anymore so… why include him?

For the record, he doesn’t even come back for the fifth and final direct-to-video film we’ll eventually get to, so clearly even the producers knew it was time to let him go. It’s just sad.

Watching this film I was struck, more than anything, by just how boring it was. The characters aren’t amusing, and there are no real jokes in the film. The film tries to do outlandish scenarios, but even these feel so odd and off-putting that it’s hard to find them funny (the film laughing at an old woman trying to be a prostitute, or how one of the characters gets raped by a CGI moose, doesn’t make either scenario funny). The film both fails to put in any effort most of the time, and then tries too hard at the wrong times, making everything feel sad.

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love doesn’t understand how to be an American Pie… or even a decent American Pie Presents. It’s an awful, unfunny mess that wastes the time of the production crew and its game actors. You wish it could be better, if only the script were at all good, but it’s simply not. This feels like the absolute worst the film series could get… and yet I have read that the final one of these films tanks it even harder. I guess we’ll see soon enough…