Movie Review: American Pie Presents: Beta House (2007)

Can you believe American Pie was released nearly ten years ago? Since then the franchise has seen two theatrical sequels and two direct-to-DVD offerings. Later this month, a third Blockbuster special is slated to hit the shelves – American Pie Presents: Beta House. Read on to determine if this movie even remotely holds a candle to its namesake . . .

It should be rather obvious, Universal Pictures is simply milking the American Pie name at this point. None of the original cast, except for Eugene Levy, would touch any of these latest movies with a ten-foot pole. Hell, the only link between American Pie Presents: Beta House and its’ forefather is the Stifler character. You may remember a sex crazed, vulgar douche bag by the name of Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott) from the original movies. It turns out he’s got a lot of relatives – namely cousins Erik (John White) and Dwight (Steve Talley). Dwight it turns out is the cool kid on campus and the defacto head of the craziest fraternity, Beta Delta Xi. They’re all about wreaking havoc and partying into the wee hours of the morning. Erik and his buddies, Bobby (Nic Nac) and Cooze (Jake Siegel), want nothing more than to become a part of the brotherhood of partiers. But aside from the 50 pledge tasks to be completed before semesters end, there is another bump in the road: Epsilon Sigma Kappa, also known as Geek House, want the Beta boys uncharted and off campus. Enter the Greek Games, a discontinued fraternity battle, to determine who stays and who goes.

Here’s the problem, even though American Pie Presents: Beta House is meant to be blatantly stupid and fun, writers Adam Herz and Erik Lindsay could have at least tried to be original. From that short synopsis you should be able to see the parallels with two of the biggest college comedies ever made – Revenge of the Nerds and Animal House. These two movies have no peers, and no one in their right mind should be trying to develop one.

On the other hand, American Pie Presents: Beta House does something so many other straight to DVD releases have failed to do recently (see Cougar Club as an example) – pile on the gratuitous nudity, all while reducing humor to the lowest possible common denominator. Bra unsnapping as one of the events in the Greek Games is brilliant. So is co-ed showers – in place just so girls can prance around in their birthday suits. On the sick humor end of things, watching a girl squirt ejaculation in a guys face is pretty low-brow (Megan if you’re reading this, call me), but seeing aged horse semen explode in someone’s mouth is even lower.

So what you get is singlehandedly one of the dumbest movies ever made. The plot has been done 1000x better before and the acting sucks (assuming you can call it that). But trumping it all is the multitude of tits and ass. And hey, isn’t that the only reason anyone would watch this? After all, ½ the cast is simply labeled “hot girl”! So take my rating of American Pie Presents: Beta House with a grain of salt – it was graded by my whimsical adolescent half and it doesn’t take much to please that part of me.