Movie Review: American Pie: Girls’ Rules
26th January 2021Twenty years or more after its first release, somehow, through sheer luck or skilful avoidance of executives who are none the wiser to its production, American Pie is still going. Where it is going, nobody really knows. Spin-offs are the target now, and as they spiral further and further down, the once sturdy ladder now soggy, wet, and falling to pieces, it becomes clear that there is a problem with the foundation the ladder is placed upon. Case-in-point, American Pie: Girls’ Rules, a film from the brainpower behind The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power and Beethoven’s Big Break does not quite instil or ferment any quality. Nor should it, and keeping the tradition of bland and miserable comedy, the series limps on, a decade after its previous instalment tried to end it all.
Opening on a wedgie joke with the roles reversed to feature a leading crew of ladies rather than lads, American Pie: Girls’ Rules only makes one change to its quest for impotent stupidity. Rather than the feckless misanthropy and adventures of drinking dudes and broskis sharing a beverage, audiences will find themselves faced with the exact same tropes but with a cast of vaguely identifiable female caricatures. Truly, truly bland and unacceptably wasteful of what few variables it can offer to the paying masses. Sadly, a support character sexually attracted to former President and smooth-talker John F. Kennedy is as far as the comedy goes.
With a severe drop-off in quality when compared to the mediocre first that spawned all these hellish spin-offs, it is fair to say that American Pie: Girls’ Rules is there only to cash-in on the relative popularity of its branding. It riffs on the sexual harassment that was probably rampant through the original series, but played off as moderately tolerable or unidentifiable humour. Stiffler returns, well, the name does anyway. The only lead to receive a second name, and then it’s only to make some form of volatile, half-ditched attempt at connecting with those few nostalgic enough to brave this senior year celebration nonsense.
To move past the obvious criticisms of the film, we must get to grips with the audience. Whoever enjoys this sort of film is of a different class. There are those who have quality control, and there are those that enjoy American Pie: Girls’ Rules. Devoid of any quality, so no changes yet to the American Pie octalogy, this cash cow has been flogged to death, and now the parts are being sold to the highest bidder. Fortunately for the mainstream audiences who will never set their sights on this waste of space, their view will never be blemished by American Pie: Girls’ Rules. It’s simple, indefinably bland and predictable comedy is infantile, you’d find as much humour in discovering your boiler had burst and your bank had foreclosed on your legs or your car or something of equal value. Pitiful, soul-sucking nonsense yet again from the series people love to pretend to feel something for.