A Long Run for a Short Bit of Fun

The American Pie franchise is absolutely obsessed with Stiflers. It made sense when we were following the adventures of Steve Stifler, as played by Sean William Scott, as his performance as the douchebag you love to hate stole the show in the first film of the series. That film had the right blend of Stifler being a jerk mixed with Stifler being an idiot, all backed by Scott’s performance, leading to a scene-stealing performance that was worth watching in each of the first three films.

While it makes sense to try and continue that magic, the series went about it in a weird way. The spin-off films couldn’t get Scott back to play Steve Stifler again, largely because these were small-budget affairs and he was too expensive to hire (American Pie Presents: Band Camp was made on a budget of $15 Mil, less than half the budget of the previous two entries in the series). Instead these films opted to bring in other Stiflers from their family, starting with Steve’s little (recast) brother, Matt, in the first spin-off and now a duo of Stiflers for the second, John White as Erik Stifler and Steve Talley as Dwight Stifler, Steve's cousins.

The spin-off films also made the Stiflers the main characters of these films, missing just why Steve Stifler worked so well in the first three movies: he wasn’t the protagonist, he was someone included to spice things up and liven the raunchiness of the party. The larger a role given to Stifler, the more the film ran the risk of ruining what worked about the characters. Matt Stifler was equal parts Stifler and Jim in American Pie Presents: Band Camp, and Erik here in the second spin-off, American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile, isn’t even really a Stifler at all; he’s all Jim. So why even make him a Stifler? Well… the film struggles with that answer for most of its run time.

Erik Stifler (White) has a big problem: he has the family name, which in certain social circles comes with a lot of expectations. Stiflers are over-the-top ladies men, raunchy assholes that everyone loves. Erik, though, isn’t that kind of person. He’s more humble, less loud, and he isn’t the ladies man that every other Stifler seems to be. He’s had a girlfriend for two years, Tracy Sterling (Jessy Schram), and they haven’t had sex yet. Erik is actually the first Stifler in who knows how long to make it to his senior year of high school as a virgin, a fact his friends, Ryan Grimm (Ross Thomas) and Mike "Cooze" Coozeman (Jake Siegel) tease him about.

The problem, such as it is, stems from the fact that Tracy just isn’t ready to have sex, and Erik is too good of a guy to try and force her (which, you know, is basically the bare minimum of consent and respect). Feeling pressure from her own friends to try and find a way to keep Erik interested even if she doesn’t want to have sex, she gives Erik a “guilt free pass” for the weekend, sending him off with his buddies to have a wild time at the University of Michigan over at the Beta House with Erik’s cousin, Dwight Stifler (Talley). But once Erik heads off, Tracy has second thoughts, attempting to cancel his free pass. Will Erik sleep with someone other than Tracy, or will he remain faithful even when given the freedom to do what he wants?

In another universe, you could see American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile being an adventure meant for Jim and Michelle while they were still in college. The two of them could be going to different schools, there’s strain in their relationship, and Michelle decides to give Jim the guilt free pass so he can sow his oats while they’re apart. The premise works well when you view it as “fundamentally good guy gets an offer from fundamentally good girl, and then decides to not take it because he loves her too much.” Of course, the problem with that is the fact that we basically already had that plotline, with Jim and Michelle, over in American Pie 2, so there would be no reason to test these two again in this series.

That doesn’t stop this storyline from feeling old and rote though because, in effect, we’ve seen something similar already. Much like with American Pie Presents: Band Camp, where you could see the whole plot laid out before you within the opening minutes of the first act, it’s pretty plain what will happen in this second spin-off because, well, the writers of these films simply aren’t that creative. If a nice guy has a nice girl as his girlfriend, then in these movies he’s going to do what he can to be with her and not take any of the bait presented before him otherwise. More drama would certainly be interesting, and would shake up the formula of these films, but that’s not what an American Pie movie is going to do.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a basic, simple story as long as it’s done well. That’s the second problem with American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile: it’s not really that good of a film. At a basic, film production level, the film is decent enough. The acting is far better this time around in comparison to the first spin-off film, and the film is competently shot and decently directed. It shouldn’t really be that we award points for a film being “competently made”, but that still puts it a few points ahead of American Pie Presents: Band Camp, which felt amateurish to a tee.

No, all the problems with the film come down to its script. The film is just not funny, which is basically the one requirement an American Pie film has to meet. The story can be aimless, pointless, and meandering (just look at American Pie 2), but if it’s uproariously funny then we can forgive a lot. American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile isn’t completely devoid of laughs – Eugene Levy manages to squeeze a few laughs out of the flat script, and Talley’s Dwight Stifler had one or two lines that I found genuinely funny – but most of the time it’s a dull and turgid affair, watching three high school students attend a party while we wait for anything interesting to happen.

Frankly the plot for this film would feel more at home in a high school drama television show. I’d say it would work on the likes of Degrassi or The OC, but even those were better written than this mess. Even Saved by the Bell could mine more laughs from terrible material than this film manages. I wasn’t utterly bored the whole time, but the film also didn’t stop me from checking my phone, getting up to get food, pausing to look up stuff online… it couldn’t keep my attention for long, largely because there wasn’t much going on and barely anything funny happening.

This is why I say that it doesn’t matter if the film is competently made if the overall quality is lacking. American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile is a comedy without much laughter, getting too caught up in its rote story to actually give us anything we really want from one of these films. While it’s nice to see the series pushing away from the standard obnoxious Stifler characters, the movie also loses the charm of that character in the process. Erik is so bland and basic that if the movie didn’t constantly remind us he’s a Stifler, we wouldn’t care about him at all. He’s just a normal, bland guy caught up in a mildly raunchy story. And that pretty much sums up this film: a nice enough movie caught up in an attempt to be mildly raunchy. When it comes to American Pie, we just expect more.