American Pie

American Pie is a fitfully funny teenage sex comedy whose likeable cast makes a stronger case for it than the writing does. Paul Weitz keeps enough affection in the boys’ friendship to make their anxiety recognisable, even when their behaviour is difficult to defend. Adam Herz’s screenplay understands how easily sexual inexperience can feel like a public failure. It is much less interested in asking when a joke at somebody else’s expense ought to stop.

Jason Biggs gives Jim Levenstein an awkwardness that feels involuntary, as though the effort to appear at ease has exhausted him. Chris Klein, as Chris ‘Oz’ Ostreicher, lends the group a softness that stops its talk about sex becoming wholly tiresome. Thomas Ian Nicholas keeps Kevin Meyers grounded, while Eddie Kaye Thomas makes Paul Finch’s self-possession another source of insecurity. The performances let us recognise friends trying to reassure one another without acquiring much wisdom in the process.

Eugene Levy is the clearest reason to stay with it. As Jim’s Father, he makes the effort to be helpful almost unbearably awkward, but never suggests that the care behind it is foolish. We laughed, then felt unexpectedly fond of him: his earnest concern survives the embarrassment he causes. Paul Weitz gives that performance enough room to establish a parent worth listening to, however much his son might prefer not to.

The women are harder to account for so generously. Alyson Hannigan brings comic assurance to Michelle Flaherty, and Natasha Lyonne gives Jessica a welcome scepticism about the boys’ preoccupations. But the film’s willingness to treat an invasion of sexual privacy as entertainment makes its kindness feel selective. We were uncomfortable with that invitation to laugh: another person’s right to choose what others see hardly seems to concern it. Giving the women some confidence and good lines does not make that problem disappear.

Richard Crudo’s cinematography keeps faces readable and the comedy easy to follow, but offers little pleasure beyond that practical job. Paul Peters’s production design is similarly unobtrusive; the surroundings seldom give us anything funny to notice while the actors are talking. This is plain staging, dependent on a performer supplying the awkward pause or the sudden flash of alarm. That restraint suits the gentler exchanges, although it leaves the broader material looking rather flat.

Priscilla Nedd-Friendly’s editing is most effective when it gives embarrassment time to register on a face. Elsewhere, the jokes can be obvious well before the film has finished delivering them, and the wait becomes a nuisance. David Nessim Lawrence’s score supports the genial mood without doing much to distinguish one passage from another. The film runs 95 minutes, but the repeated insistence on sexual inadequacy makes parts of it feel longer.

The teen sex comedy needs some recognition alongside its dirty jokes, and the friendship here supplies it. The boys’ fondness for one another gives their foolishness a reason to matter, even when their conversation becomes wearing. But the film returns too readily to humiliation without much concern for who has agreed to be part of the joke. Try it if embarrassment comedy is your pleasure; patience with adolescent boasting will be useful.