Just call me an all-‘american’ girl
Call me Miss American Pie. The sophomoric (but sweet) coming-of-age series won me when we first met Jim and the gang from East Great Falls High School scheming to lose their virginity at the prom.
I was also graduating with the Class of 1999, and feeling anxious about sex and leaving my friends and a boyfriend behind for college in September.
I was the girl who hung out with the guys, so I was wellversed in the film’s bathroom humor and T&A talk. The characters on screen would fit right in with my crowd at the diner for shakes and crispy fries. And the alt-rock soundtrack (Barenaked Ladies, Blink 182, Third Eye Blind) was straight out of my CD collection.
Best of all, the chicks, like my girl friends and I, were equal parts raunchy and romantic. They were fleshed-out characters, rather than pieces of objectified flesh — except for Nadia the foreign exchange student, of course.
I saw my own high school experience on screen, and my peers and I savored every bite.
Then came the sequel. And, similar to coming back to your hometown the summer after freshman year in college, it was familiar and comforting, but ultimately annoying.
In “American Pie 2,” the boys try too hard to recapture the magic from their senior year of high school, which echoed the filmmakers’ desperate attempt to re-create the spirit (and the
profits) of the first film. Both resulted in some laughs and iconic moments (Jim as “Petey” playing the trombone), but they both fell flat.
I went back to the dorms, and I grew apart from the “Pie” kids even as many of my reallife high school friendships faded. I saw Alyson Hannigan around on “How I Met Your Mother,” but I didn’t attend her “American Wedding,” you know?
Yet, I couldn’t miss “American Reunion.” I just had to know: Are Jim and Michelle still married? Is Oz still a hot jock? Do the “MILF” guys still hang out?
The movie began awkwardly, like a real reunion would. There are gross-out jokes I don’t have the same stomach for anymore.
But then again, neither do Jim, Kevin, Finch and Oz. They call Stifler out on his juvenile antics — and I actually felt sorry for him. As the token single in my circle of married and engaged friends, I identify with the Stifmeister begging his buds to put down the baby for a minute and pick up a beer, just for old time’s sake.
And as more familiar faces appeared on the screen (Vicky! Jessica! Stifler’s mom!) and I watched them tackle the same issues my thirtysomething friends and I are going through now (from frustrations at work to the death of a parent), I remembered what drew me to these kids — now adults — in the first place: They’re reflections of us.
And it’s great to see them again.