The Consumer’s Corner

Ah the American Pie films, what used to be the finest theatrical comedy release franchise has now moved to the surprisingly lucrative straight to DVD business. The last time you may have heard from the gang was in the third installment American Wedding. Well since then the original cast has moved onto smaller and worse things, except Alyson Hannigan I love her! Instead of focusing on the loveable Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) like the first three films did, these much smaller productions follow the shenanigans of the infamous party loving Stifler family, brought to life by Steve Stifler (Sean William Scott) in the classic original film.

When I first heard the franchise was moving to straight to DVD releases I thought (as many of you probably did/do) “oh no, why?” But being a fan of the franchise I decided to rent the first addition American Pie presents Band Camp and since I expected the worst I was pleasantly surprised. I actually think it would have done well as a theatrical release. It had a solid plot, gripping characters, the usual American Pie laughs and a certain charm to it which is a lot more than your ordinary DVD release.

The second new installment, American Pie presents The Naked Mile introduced us to a whole new batch of Stiflers. Even though they are cousins of the legendary Steve, the Stifler tradition is alive in these characters as well. But with less familiar faces and a much weaker plot and screenplay The Naked Mile failed in its task. Even those who rented it just for the word “naked” in the title (and I’m sure there were many of you) were probably disappointed as the nudity level was surprisingly low.

Which brings us to the third and latest version of the American Pie universe, American Pie presents Beta House. Again a straight to DVD release, this movie brings back the characters from the previous movie with a few good additions to give it a more familiar feel and it worked. This movie is ten times better than The Naked Mile with more gross out humor and much, much, much more nudity.

Last time we saw Erik Stifler (John White) was when he was touring colleges in The Naked Mile, well surprise! He chose the one that his cousin, Dwight Stifler (Steve Talley) goes to. Being a Beta is a Stifler family tradition and honor. In Beta House we see Erik and his buddies pledging the fraternity by doing many demeaning and sexual tasks. But all is not fun and games in the Beta house. It seems that another fraternity is confronting the Beta’s for campus dominance. This fraternity is made up of the extremely smart and rich which is why their fraternity name is GEEK. The GEEK’s are tired of the Beta’s obnoxiousness and vow to get them disbarred and how do they do that? By challenging them to an old custom of scandalous and disturbing games, sound familiar? The whole movie is basically Revenge of the Nerds (1984) in reverse.

While there are numerous similarities to Revenge of the Nerds, Beta House does not have the appeal or charisma that the earlier film has. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a film worth seeing. It does have plenty of laughs that are for a certain audience. If you find nudity, sexual humor, bodily fluids and basically anything sexual you can think of offensive, this is NOT a movie for you. But if you’re on the other side of that fence this movie will be much more delightful than its predecessor The Naked Mile. Beta House has a decent although sometimes unbelievable screenplay that will have young adults “aroused” and laughing.

Official Site

–Andy Gates

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 12:37 pm and is filed under TV Shows & Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.