American Pie Presents the Naked Mile Movie Review

How exactly does one movie "present" another movie?

I'm not sure exactl when American Pie became a cultural juggernaut, but I do know when it started to suck: Right after the second movie came out. Now in its fifth installment, the once cheeky Pie has become about as funny as a late-stage Porky's sequel, just biding time until the producers can no longer find girls willing to spend 90 minutes topless and kids willing to pay $20 to watch them.

This installment of the American Pie universe offers a Stifler cousin named Erik (John White), who's in his third year of a sex-free relationship with girlfriend Tracy (Jessy Schram). Generous to a fault, she finally gives Erik a "free pass" for one weekend, and he and his friends decide to go visit another Stifler cousin at his college, where a "naked mile" is being run. (You know, drunk students running across campus in the buff.) Erik meets a girl there. Will he go for it?

You can see all that coming, and you can probably see the midgets (a major side plot), the Viagra mishap, and the scenes of bodily fluids flying. None of this is altogether funny, but it's mightily vulgar. Be advised this is not one to expose the kiddies to.

Most difficult is actually keeping track of the four male leads. One has darker hair than the other three. Aside from that, I actually had a lot of trouble keeping track of who was who. I never thought I'd believe that the characters in American Pie were rich and nuanced, but compared to the disjointed, half-written affair here, they may as well be from Shakespeare.

It's sad that George Lucas in Love wunderkind Joe Nussbaum has already been relegated to this kind of material. His sole released-in-theaters directorial experience was the not-terrible Sleepover, and now he's makin' pie. Oh, the humanity.

DVD extras include deleted scenes (how is that possible?), gag reel, and featurettes (including one on the guys getting their butts waxed). Not kidding.

Aka American Pie 5: The Naked Mile.