Erik Stifler is nothing like the rest of his family; he's geeky, super intelligent and still a virgin. He's had a girlfriend for the past few years and they are genuinely in love but she doesn't feel ready to have sex, and he's feeling the pressure from his friends. Knowing this she gives him a week's 'free pass' - allowing him to do whatever he wants, with whoever he want with no consequences. So he decides to visit his cousin at college and decides to take part in their naked mile - a run which sees all the students on campus running through the grounds nude. Will he take up his girlfriends offer……….
The original American Pie movies had that rarest of things: charm, in amidst of all the bodily fluids and teenage smuttiness they possessed an engaging spirit, brilliant performances, a surprisingly touching central romance and some genuinely funny, belly-laugh-inducing moments. Sadly the powers that be chose to extend the franchise with the diabolical Band Camp and now this, the stupidest, most cringe worthy teen comedy I have seen in years. The Naked Mile is a hard slog from beginning to end, with barely a smattering of laughs to break up the over bearing tedium and predictability of it all and the fact that all the characters are so one dimensional doesn't help things.
The most glaringly annoying problem with The Naked Mile is that it is just so obvious - every joke is signaled to us, every plot twist is over explained (as if they were hard to grasp in the first place) and the whole thing just trips itself up on many separate occasions. We are told what the joke is going
to be before it happens, so when it does come along (usually after an excruciatingly long set-up) it has well and truly been deflated. It doesn't help that the jokes just aren't funny - the physical comedy lacks any sort of finesse or style and the main sight gags seem to go on forever- or that they are delivered by actors who could have been adequately replaced with timber. One gag involving a football game with midgets who are freakishly strong takes up about ten minutes of running time and never raises so much as a chuckle, displaying some of the most stupid examples of slapstick in recent memory. And then as if that wasn't excruciating enough the characters keep appearing in mindlessly offensive scenes that are equally unfunny and often quite of putting. Then instead of bringing its own comedy sequences to the plate, it unashamedly rips of the original movies badly - including one of the funniest moments form the first (Michelle and Jim's first sex scene) but spins it into an anal rape/slightly disturbing episode which doesn't work. And that encapsulates what is so bad about the whole thing, it far more cynically produced than the others in the series, and an obvious attempt to cash in on a franchise without injecting any spirit or life into it.
The script is fairly horrendous throughout - weighed down by appallingly unrealistic dialogue, littered with unlike able characters and spiked with stupid jokes and unintelligible plot twists. It's all written in a very clunky/fragmented manner which slows the films already flagging pace to a virtual halt (which is as much to do with the dodgy editing to be fair) and constantly trips the whole thing up. The clumsiness also seeps into the dialogue which feels constantly forced and strained, this makes most of the non physical comedy fall flat on its face, because its become just too stilted to be funny. One running joke (involving a 4 hour hard-on pill) is handled so badly that it becomes almost laughable; because like everything in The Naked Mile, a subject that could have been funny for 30 seconds becomes a quarter of an hour montage of slapdash, overly choppy rubbish. One of the main faults of the script is the fact that the main characters are just so incredibly annoying, every one of them is stupid, ignorant, arrogant and thoroughly punch able. Even the 'geeky approachable' main character reeks of coyness - the same coyness that hinders the whole script. The naked mile which is spoken much of throughout the first quarter of the movie, is finished by the half way point (in a cripplingly bad fashion) and from there on the film spirals out of control - with no point and many stupid scenes which have no climax. The screenplay also lacks any sort of structure with very little linking each scene together and no sense of continuity whatsoever which again contributes to the whole rushed quality that the movie stinks of.
John White shows himself to be a wholly incompetent leading man as Erik Stifler; too smug to be engaging yet not confident/playful enough to be a successful hero. In failing to rouse any good will from the audience he fails to make the character work and makes the finale completely redundant (a feat which was already achieved by the screenplay) He lacks the sort of charisma which made Jason Biggs such a winning lead and seems very uncomfortable in the geeky-but-earnest role which is the staple of all good ten comedies. This isn't helped by his complete lack of chemistry with everybody else involved in the project - especially Jessy Schram Erik's love interest, and a crippling lack of comic timing. However, she fares slightly better with her chipper girl-next-door demeanor and appealing all American girl good looks. This isn't to say that she does anything special though; she smiles, pouts and skips through the film without breaking into a sweat or putting any real effort in. But these are nothing compared to Jake Seigel's horrifyingly bland, annoying, irritating and unfunny performance as Cooze - one of Erik's best friends. His performance reeks of over confidence (with no visible talent to back it up) and he frequently seems to forget that he's part of a film - often looking at the camera, smiling at inappropriate times and generally just acting uncomfortably in all situations. This is occasionally offset by a frenetic over-zealousness which completely drowns out anything else in the scene, visibly aggravating the other actors and destroying any comedy that's happening around him.
I suppose that it's not all bad, the central romance is fairly sweet (despite the unease between the romantic leads) and anchors the film with some sort of emotional weight: even though the ending belittles the sporadically charming interplay between them in favor of an easy, shallow Hollywood ending. It also looks fairly good for a straight-to-video release with good cinematography and decent set pieces. That's about it, oh, and there is a bit of nudity - which is always a bonus.
Overall The Naked Mile is a rubbish and extremely unamusing attempt to cash in on a successful franchise with a very bad script, some pretty awful acting, uninspired comedy set pieces and some extremely silly plot twists.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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Kudos to the home-video exec who came up with the "Presents..." prefix to keep a movie ... more
franchise going, even though it has almost no relation to the entries that came before. This is number five in the series that started withAmerican Pie, an unexpecte...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Ready to run wild with hundreds of naked students in one of the craziest college ... more
traditions ever? Then, you'll love the all-new hilarious slice of American Pie served up Stifler-style in American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile!When Erik Stifler realises ...
![American Pie Presents The Naked Mile [DVD] [2006]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78215685.jpg "American Pie Presents The Naked Mile [DVD] [2006]")
Mar 21st, 2007
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