The Reverse Revenge of the Nerds

The continued success for the American Pie Presents direct-to-video films gave Universal a lot of hope. While a fourth mainline film had yet to go into development after the success of American Wedding, the back to back sales numbers for American Pie Presents: Band Camp and American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile showed there was still plenty of life in the franchise. People wanted raunchy comedies with gross out humor, obnoxious characters, and a fair bit of nudity, and those two films had it. Almost as soon as the second of the direct-to-video releases came out, Universal pushed a third into production.

This third was American Pie Presents: Beta House, and unlike how the first two were largely unrelated works, this third was actually a direct sequel to the previous film, American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile. It is possible that Universal had overestimated how much their audience was interested in these films that were only tangentially related to the main American Pie series. The sales slowly started going down, especially for this third movie, and it seemed like audiences were tired of the film series.

Or perhaps they were simply tired of bad films from the American Pie series. While the first two of these American Pie Presents films were relative sales successes, they were not as well received critically. In fact, it’s fair to say that people generally hated them. The third film, providing the same level of creativity and writing (i.e., not much) may have proven to be a bridge too far, and audiences checked out. While American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile made $27.46 in the U.S. alone off a budget of $15 Mil, the third outing wasn’t so lucky. American Pie Presents: Beta House brought in a much lower $18.55 Mil in the U.S., making it successful only because it was made on a smaller, $10 Mil budget.

So, what went wrong? Well, the most obvious answer is that the film just isn’t very good. It follows the continuing adventures of Erik Stifler (John White). Although he’d spent the previous film trying to decide if he wanted to be with his girlfriend Tracy or not, eventually sticking with her, declaring his love for her, which led to her finally sleeping with him, we can toss all that aside in this film. Tracy is gone, having dumped Erik to go back to that hottie she nearly banged in the last film, and Erik goes to college a free man, able to find any girl he wants.

He settles on Ashley Thomas (Meghan Heffern), a girl he meets on his first day, having wandered into the coed bathroom to do his business. She has been burned before, and normally wouldn’t go after a frat guy, but Erik seems different, even though he’s pledging Beta House, and she gives him a chance. But Erik has to work to win her love, and the respect of his fellow Betas, doing a series of challenges to get into the frat and prove himself to everyone in his life. He better get on it quick, too, because a rival frat, the Geek House, is coming for the Betas, and it could soon be all hands on deck if they want to fight off the challenge and save their house.

There are flaws with this story from the very outset. The first is that this film essentially throws away all the character work that Erik went through in the previous film. He had a big moral quandary there, does he take the free pass Tracy gives him so he can sleep with whomever he wants or stay faithful to her because he loves her, and he chooses the latter which is hailed as a huge choice and moment of growth for his character. But now that is tossed aside before this film even starts, setting Erik back at square one and rendering the whole plot of the whole movie moot. Who cares if he sleeps around on his free pass weekend which Tracy is just going to dump him to go sleep with someone else instantly after.

Even if we cast that aside, though, this film doesn’t really challenge Erik or anyone else in the film. Erik has three things he has to do over the course of the movie: get a girl, get into the Betas, and defeat the Geeks. The first part he does with basically no effort as Ashley effectively falls into his lap and every time he screws up in any way (like blowing a load all over her favorite teddy bear) she forgives him instantly without him even having to try. A love story doesn’t have any thrills or meaning if there’s no challenges within it, and Erik is never challenged once by Ashley. Aside from giving him someone to kiss after the climax of the film, Ashley actually adds nothing to the story at all.

Getting into Betas also is a no-effort scenario. As his cousin, Dwight Stifler (a returning Steve Talley), notes, Erik is a legacy so he’s in the fraternity no matter what. He still has to do a series of 60-something challenges with the other pledges – Jake Siegel as Mike "Cooze" Coozeman, Nick Nicotera as Bobby, and Robbie Amell as Nick Anderson – but this series of challenges is largely cast aside in a couple of montages where we don’t even see them do the activities, we just see them scratch them off the list. It’s the most low-effort, no-thrills version of a montage I’ve ever seen.

Finally we have the battle of the houses between the Betas and the Geeks. The Geeks here are presented as the “snobs” up against the Beta’s “slobs”, which is a really weird position to take. The Betas are kings of the campus, we’re shown, and the Geeks make a house so they have a place for themselves. Yes, they have money and they’re arrogant, but as a film series like Revenge of the Nerds has illustrated, the nerds need to fight to be taken seriously, and now the people that would normally be picking on them are shown as the protagonists while the Geeks are the bad guys? It’s a weird story to tell, not unlike how the little people frat from the previous film were actually the bad guys. I don’t think the writers of these films actually know who good guys and bad guys are supposed to be in the movies.

If you want the Betas to be considered underdogs then you have to give them flaws, and the film never does. They’re the cool, smooth operators on campus, the ones that get things done and always have the best parties, so why should we ever think they’re the loveable losers in this scenario? And when it comes to the battle between the houses, there’s never a thought that the Betas will actually lose because the film has never shown them to be anything other than winners. It’s one bad decision after another for this film, without anything interesting going on to back it all up.

What American Pie Presents: Beta House really has is a few mild jokes – some of which I could have lived without, such as a series of trans panic jokes that are utterly tasteless, especially in 2007 when the writers should have known better – and a lot of nudity. If all you wanted was a bunch of nudity strung together with a poorly written, loose plot… well, you could just go out and find some porn. Hell, there’s a good chance it would be better written than this slop. American Pie Presents: Beta House is easily the worst film in the series yet, and we’re not even done with this spin-off series of films beacuse Universal really thought they could milk this franchise just a little bit more. Ugh.