Movie · 1999 · Comedy, Romance · 1h 35m · R · English
Curator score: 2.8/10 (926.4K ratings)
There's nothing like your first piece.
Overview
At a high-school party, four friends find that losing their collective virginity isn't as easy as they had thought. But they still believe that they need to do so before college. To motivate themselves, they enter a pact to all "score" by their senior prom.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.8/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.14/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 62%
Metacritic: 58
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Paul Weitz
Production
Zide-Perry Productions, Universal Pictures
Cast
Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Alyson Hannigan, Shannon Elizabeth, Tara Reid, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Seann William Scott, Eugene Levy, Natasha Lyonne, Mena Suvari, Jennifer Coolidge, Chris Owen, Eric Lively, Molly Cheek, Eli Marienthal, Tara Subkoff, Lawrence Pressman, Clyde Kusatsu, Christina Milian
Curator Review
Verdict
A raunchy, high-energy teen comedy that helped define the late-’90s gross-out wave. It’s funny, fast, and culturally influential, but its humor is very of its era and can feel crude, repetitive, and mean-spirited if you’re not in the mood for broad sex comedy.
Best for
Viewers who like crude ensemble comedies
Fans of late-’90s teen movies
People curious about a major pop-culture comedy touchstone
Anyone who enjoys awkward, escalating coming-of-age chaos
Skip if
You dislike gross-out humor and sexual humiliation jokes
You want a more thoughtful or emotionally grounded teen film
You’re sensitive to outdated gender politics or frat-boy energy
You prefer comedy with a softer, more character-driven tone
Overview
American Pie is a defining late-’90s teen sex comedy: shameless, rowdy, and built around the panic and bravado of high-school boys trying to outrun embarrassment. It moves quickly, leans hard into set-piece humor, and gets a lot of mileage out of awkwardness, taboo, and escalating bad decisions.
Worth noting
What still works is the ensemble chemistry and the movie’s knack for turning adolescent anxiety into broad comic momentum. It’s not subtle, and a lot of the jokes are deliberately juvenile, but that’s also the point: the film is a time capsule of a specific mainstream comedy era when raunch was the selling point.
Bottom line
If you’re looking for a polished coming-of-age story, this isn’t it. If you want a hugely influential studio comedy that helped shape the teen-movie landscape of the 2000s, it remains an easy watch, even when it’s cringey by design.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Keegan ✌🏻 (3★) · 5260 likes
It's been years and yet I still don't understand why he fucks the pie.
neve (2.5★) · 3050 likes
are we just gonna ignore how heather and oz are the OG troy and gabriella?
Ben McDonald · 2165 likes
Apparently this is a movie I watch with my family now.
saint (2★) · 1567 likes
Not the pieussy
pilot (2★) · 1556 likes
this movie was very effective in teaching High School Me to stay away from teen boys, so at least there’s that
1999 · Comedy, Drama · 1h 43m · R · Curator 7.8/10 (309.8K ratings) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, MGM Plus, Philo
Another late-’90s comedy about social competition and adolescent self-delusion, but with a nastier satirical edge.