American Pie

To be leaving high school with cherry intact is weird, judging by the goings-on in contemporary teen movies. For a red-blooded, Hustler heated, testosterone tanked male, it is hardly credible. What do kids do if they don't do it?

Following the semen stains in There's Something About Mary, Paul Weitz's film aims at the V spot. It dares to be sexist. It bates the PC police. It eulogises male chauvinism, while, at the same time, exposing rampant 17-year-old US middle-class jocks as fizzless squibs in the soft furnishing dept.

"We're all going to college virgins," Jim (Jason Biggs) whines. "They must have dorms for people like us." He and his mates have a problem - to get, or not to get, laid. They decide in their ignorance and desperation TO GO FOR IT. But how?

Advice on girlplay: "Ask them questions and listen to what they say and shit."
Reply: "That sounds like a lot of work."

These guys are goofs in the seduction stakes. Stifler (Seann W Scott) has been there. He's done it. He knows the moves, with the result that he treats babes as bedroom fodder. His arrogance is as smooth as a gun barrel. Jim has a dad (Eugene Levy) who lobs innuendos over his barricades as a method of parental encouragement. Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) has inherited a historic sex manual from his brother and knows about the Big O. Oz (Chris Klein) stops calling himself Casanova and joins a singing group because someone said that "jazz girls are hot".

For a movie that treats penetration with military precision, it is not as radical as it appears. Traditional rites-of-passage sentiments surrounding the Prom remain intact. The girls are tough and on top, as you would expect. The guys only think they are, which is the joke. The young cast is always interesting - the girls less so, surprisingly - with Biggs showing signs of genuine comic talent.