American Pie (1999)

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR FIRST PIECE

Teen movies were big in the 80s. They became big business because of films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and pretty anything John Hughes made. At some amidst this, a sub-genre took a spike as some filmmakers wanted to focus more on a specific aspect of teenage life – Sex: The Quest to Get Laid. This was an element present in Hughes films and Fast Times, but it was only part of them. Lesser titles were pretty much just cheap T&A flicks set to titillate, but in the end were rather disposable. Stuff like Private School, Losin’ It, Valley Girls, Hamburger: The Motion Picture or the more lasting Porky’s. At some point, maybe because of the whole AIDS scare thing, sex took a bit of step back from the teen flick. However, by the later portion of the 90s, the tradition was revived, assembling an attractive young cast and seeing what hormonal hi-jinx they got up to, with the film American Pie.

Jim (Jason Biggs), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) are four friends who make a pact that, before they graduate high school, they will all lose their virginity, with prom being the deadline for them to reach their goal.

The script by Adam Herz, his first, is clearly a rather fond throwback to the likes of Porky’s (Herz wrote his dissertation on Porky’s in university). As such, it’s really more of a collection of gross or awkward scenes. Not that there’s no story. There is, although it does feel somewhat episodic because of the focus on the Pale Ale scene or the Stripping scene or the Pooping scene. These scenes are quite pronounced and they are the thing you’ll remember long after the film ends, but they’re used as part of a trade-off with the audience. The scenes of gross-out humour are what bring the youngsters in, but the reason it wants to talk to them at all is to talk about sex.

What separates American Pie from other sex comedies aimed at young folk, like Porky’s or Slackers or even National Lampoon’s Animal House, is the frank and actually rather considered approach to the character’s attitudes towards sex. Yes, they talk about it a lot and can’t wait to do it, and the film takes great fun in dragging out their hormonal exploits, but there is some actual growth in these characters. Towards the end, they begin to consider the idea that being in a rush to lose their virginity may not be as high priority as they think. And even if they do, it’s still no one’s business but their own. Pressure to get it done, whether from friends or yourself, will just end up making you hate sex before you even have it. There’s also genuine conversation about love vs. lust, which goes beyond just the tokenism displayed in other teen comedies.

Further to this careful discussion, American Pie holds a cast of really rather well drawn characters, defined from each other and all holding some aspect of familiarity with the audience. In your school years, you know people like Jim or Stifler or Michelle. That we are already so familiar with these types of people means that the message of the film is presented in a far more approachable manner. It wouldn’t work if the characters were too abstract or too flat. They do seem real and so their thoughts and feelings do, too. What’s actually very refreshing for this type of film is the care taken with the female characters. So often are they nothing more than The Goal, and so tend to be one-dimensional and unrelatable. In American Pie, the girls are just as confused by their hormones as the guys, they just handle it a bit better. None of the girls in our immediate range are bitchy or dumb or a target for our spite. No one is. Even a dick like Stifler is still strangely likable.

The cast all pull their weight admirably. Jason Biggs is a great nervous presence as Jim (and Eugene Levy is superb as his lovable, repressed dad); Seann William Scott simply is Stifler; Natasha Lyonne’s Jessica is great; and Alyson Hannigan steals the whole film with a performance carefully controlled and geared towards a single line of dialogue. Even Tara Reid is good.

American Pie is a deceptively sweet film, which nimbly offers the standard gross-out gags along with a surprisingly mature perspective on sex as relates to teenagers. The premise is sufficiently simple to allow an easy flow of humour, the characters are defined and the performances are good all round. The franchise may have been somewhat devalued by the subsequent straight-to-DVD sequels, but the first time out is certainly worth the watch.

About a Boy (2002)

GROWING UP HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AGE

As many of you are no doubt aware, there was a time that Hugh Grant was the very embodiment of the charming, bumbly Englishman in the movies… and then he got arrested with a hooker. I’ll skip over the details, but Grant was able to handle the whole thing so well, that his career actually managed to go up a notch or two. Now that he had some kind of dirt on him, he was freed up to take roles that may not have been open to him before. One such example is this, About a Boy, adapted from the second novel by Nick Hornby.

Will Freeman (Hugh Grant) is a hip 30-something guy whose friends pity him because of his shallow, immature and philandering ways. He responds by passing himself off as a single father so he can meet single mothers, who are much easier to shag and dump. However, Will’s life is interrupted when he meets 12-year old Marcus (Nicholaus Hoult), a boy who is his complete opposite.

There is a rather nice sense of restraint that comes through About a Boy, which is allows it to be quite refreshing and fairly free of cliché. There’s no big emotional scenes with characters tearfully stating their troubles or intents. Instead, directors Paul and Chris Weitz (probably best known for American Pie) have opted for a more controlled and subtle effort to come through. From the framing, the use of colour and the positioning of the actors, taking a single frame from any scene between Will and Marcus in Will’s place and you can sense the kind of relationship between them. Will clearly belongs here; Marcus clearly doesn’t. Will fits in almost anywhere, even if it’s because, as he says himself, he’s blank; Marcus doesn’t fit in anywhere. This is probably the most focused film the Weitz brothers have made.

The Oscar-nominated script (by the Brothers Weitz and Peter Hedges) also captures Hornby’s sarcastic sense of humour wonderfully. The voice-over can be a little hit-and-miss, but it’s worth it for the moments it works. For example, when Marcus’s mother is being taken to hospital in an ambulance, and Will is following behind with Marcus as his passenger, his voice-over informs us that, “It was terrible! Terrible!…but driving really fast behind the ambulance was fantastic!” Between that and Grant’s barely suppressed smile, you know that you’d be thinking the same thing.

Hugh Grant gives a superb performance here. There’s really quite a lot to dislike in Will’s character. He’s arrogant, shallow and seems to have a pathological aversion to anything that requires any emotional connection that lasts over two days. That said, Grant still manages to give him a likable charm. It would be so easy to find him repellent, his immature nature being too overwhelming for the audience to connect, but Grant is (despite the opinions of some) a much better actor than that. Hell, he’s even able to make you feel sorry for him at times, and considering the self-involved nature of Will, that’s quite a feat. There really aren’t many actors who could be so believable as a complete dick, and yet still give him a much-needed sense of depth and get across his sense of humour.

There is also able, if sporadic, support given by Toni Collette, as Marcus’ suicidal mother, and Rachel Weisz (or as I tend to refer to her, Academy-Award-winning-über-lovely Rachel Weisz), who are, frankly, two of the most consistently excellent actresses going.

One of the defining characteristics of Nick Hornby’s books is the relationship with music as part of the character’s lives (for example, see the novels for About a Boy and High Fidelity). Even some of his non-fiction work is about how much music plays a part in his life and work (31 Songs). Fittingly then, one of the greatest things about this film is its soundtrack, written and performed by Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy. It’s an unreserved joy to listen to and it beautifully accents each scene without vying for the attention of the audience over the film itself. Even if you haven't seen the movie, just buy the soundtrack. It's wonderful.

I’ll be honest, though; there is an element of About a Boy that I don’t particularly like. I’ve always found Marcus to be such an annoying little bugger. He’s a tragic case, sure, and it’s his complete lack of self-awareness and his willingness to put his mother’s happiness before himself that makes him the good influence that Will needs. That said, I can’t help but dislike him for a fair portion of the movie’s running time… and it’s precisely because of his complete lack of self-awareness. The whole thing about him being so lost in his own head that he will start singing in class without realising it just irks me, and the way he forces his way into Will’s flat and his life is incredibly off-putting. And Nicholaus Hoult’s performance doesn’t exactly downplay these aspects. He always seems so genuinely confused as to why Will finds him annoying, despite the fact that he basically blackmails him into hanging out with him. I do want to feel bad for the kid, but Hoult really doesn’t make it easy.

Perhaps the real root of this dislike comes from me identifying a bit too much with the character of Will. Not the lying, womanising dick part of him; the I-just-want-to-be-left-alone-with-all-my-cool-stuff part of him. If I’m honest, I think I see quite a bit of myself in Will Freeman, and that’s really why I don’t like Marcus, and by extension Hoult. In exactly the same way that the entrance of a child (or at least this particular child) irrevocably alters Will’s life, mine would probably be thrown off just as much because I’m just as self-involved as him. I maintain that Hoult’s performance emphasises too much of the bad side, but I think that my own self-centred nature probably has a little to do with it, too.

In the end, I actually do quite like About a Boy. It’s not perfect by many standards, but Hugh Grant gives a fine performance, the music is absolutely sublime and there is enough character and sentiment to allow the film to be the funny, warm and rather sweet film it sets out to be.