It has been 12 years since the teen comedy American Pie was released. I was about 15 years old and can still remember the first time I snuck in and watched this movie in the theater. I thought it was the most hilarious/crude thing I had ever seen, and would have felt embarrassment if forced to watch it with my parents. Living through the same developmental stages as the characters, I connected with their stories and the phases they were going through. An underlying theme which is unavoidable in teenage coming of age movies is the need and experience of sexual awakening. Scenes like masturbating with a warm apple pie, or experiencing oral sex for the first time was an educational lesson for my friends and I; American pie was the perfect way to learn these scary truths. "The New York Times felt American Pie was "one of the shallowest and the most prurient teen films," (Wikipedia), which it may have been, however, the New York Times didn't get a pubescent teen to write their critique.
I look at the current teen comedy, and I see that not much has changed aside from clothing and music trends. I recently watched Easy A, a contemporary teen comedy that came out just last year and it didn't even compare to the stories told in the American Pie franchise. I feel like the explicitness of the American Pie series created a timeless homage that even contemporary teens can view and still feel like they are experiencing the same issues as teens 12 years ago. American Pie took teen comedies to another level, one in which other directors in this genre don't feel worthy of competing against. It has spawned at least six more films in this series that I can think of, the most recent in 2009. The older I've become the less I've cared about viewing these more recent films. I have grown past that stage, but I can still see the need of production for these films, and I know that our current generation of teenagers are fully enjoying them as much as I once did.
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