American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile

What’s the Story?

Erik Stifler is a sweet guy with good friends, and he's even a little cool. But he's also the cousin of notorious womanizers Matt and Steve Stifler (Steve was played by Seann William Scott in the first several films of the American Pie franchise), and he feels pressure to live up to the Stifler name. Even his father says that when he was Erik's age "I was up to my neck in poontang." But Erik also has a girlfriend of two years, Tracy, who isn't ready to have sex. So far, Erik has been respectful of that, but as senior year winds to a close and his friends exert more pressure on him, he starts to pressure Tracy. Meanwhile, Tracy is getting pressure from her friends to "give him a reason to stick around or he'll find a girl with looser boundaries." So when Erik's friends encourage him to attend an annual college ritual called the Naked Mile, Tracy gives him a "guilt-free weekend pass" to have sex as much as he wants and come back to her. What will Erik do? How will it affect his relationship?

Is It Any Good?

It's very easy to overlook the real moral of this story -- that each teen needs to figure out for himself what he wants sexually, regardless of what parents or friends say. All the naked breasts, lingerie, sexist language, hard-on jokes, and gross-out humor can't help but get in the way. But strip away the raunchy dressing of THE NAKED MILE -- if you can -- and you have an oddly sweet love story of two teens in a committed relationship trying to figure out when and if they're ready to have sex. Though the extremely explicit presentation of the subject matter may make parents uncomfortable, it can give older teens a chance to talk about what messages they get from their friends about sex and how they can make smart decisions for themselves.

Parents may be alarmed by some of the things the girls say -- Tracy's friend advises her, "We're girls. Boys should know better than to trust us to be rational. It's not in our natures." -- and some of the things boys say -- when discussing Erik's "tragic" virginal status, a friend says, "I blame Tracy. If she would just give up a little ass maybe you wouldn't be killing your relatives with your money shot." All this bawdy banter and exposed flesh, in their own way, serve the plot, making Tracy and Erik work harder to reach the right decision for them. The fact that they choose love instead of promiscuity should provide some relief to parents.