‘American Pie’ adds to Hollywood smut

In theaters

“American Pie”

Who knew that cinematic history would be made during the summer of 1999?

It’s true. The final nail in the coffin for American cinema was driven home just last weekend with the release of “American Pie.”

Our culture is now officially dead, not that anyone has heard anything about its demise. No one cares about its passing because, frankly, no one is interested in good films. What audiences have decided they want is mindless smut.

Smut is our present, smut is our future, smut is where it’s at, so bring on the smut — and make it raunchy.

Extreme statements? Perhaps. But consider some of this summer’s biggest blockbusters: “Big Daddy,” “Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” and now Paul Weitz’s “American Pie,” whose big joke is having a teen-age boy get it on with a warm apple pie so he can have a good idea of what it feels like to have sex with a woman.

At my screening, not one woman or teen-age girl laughed at that scene, and who can blame them? Hollywood has become increasingly sexist and mean-spirited toward women. Who cares? Not Hollywood. When a film such as “Big Daddy” opens at $40 million and goes on to make nearly $100 million in two weeks, it’s clear that misogyny is big business.

And so is smut, glorious smut, which, admittedly, as “Austin Powers” and “South Park” proved, can be very funny. But their overwhelming popularity comes at a steep price — with studios pouring hundreds of millions into trash, fewer good films will be made.

It’s a sad state of affairs. We’re living in a culture that has seen the B movie become the A movie; “American Pie” is a perfect example of that. Years ago, “Pie” would have been lumped in with such throwaway films as “Porky’s” or “Animal House” — now these films not only turn unknowns into stars, but are backed with powerhouse advertising budgets that should have been used to promote better films.

To be fair, “Pie” isn’t a bad movie; it’s actually something of a novelty and a paradox. For its intended audience of horny teen-age boys, it actually uses smut to promote good manners, a good value system and decent morals.

To those boys, it says this: Treat women well, listen to them with sincere interest, respect them — and you might not only lose your virginity, but experience something deeper and more meaningful along the way.

But that’s just the film’s subtext, its deeply buried subtext, which is often lost in a movie that would have found no audience had it not been laced with a never ending barrage of raunch. Another paradox, and a telling reminder of the downward direction popular films are taking.

Grade: C+

On video

“A Civil Action”

Not to be uncivilized, but Steven Zaillian’s film adaptation of Jonathan Harr’s best-selling book, “A Civil Action,” is hardly the great, gripping, cinematic triumph some critics hailed it to be.

The film is long and passionless, timid where it should have been ignited by rage. At its core, it’s the true story of an eight-year wrongful-death suit personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta) filed against W.R. Grace & Co. and Beatrice Foods in the 1980s.

The case? Schlichtmann accused Grace and Beatrice of knowingly dumping toxic chemicals into the Woburn, Mass., water supply. The chemicals, spilled from a tannery, allegedly caused the deaths of several children and one adult from leukemia.

Naturally compelling and ripe with drama, the case made for a terrific book that won the National Book Award, but the film, which starts well and offers a good performance by Robert Duvall as a seasoned lawyer, has different ideas, none of which works as well as those in the book.

Whereas the book wasn’t steeped in cliches, the film is absolutely reliant on how well we know our cliches, particularly in how the families are portrayed. We’ve seen every one of these sad, gray faces before — usually in better television movies — but instead of allowing the faces to emerge as individuals with real pain, real anger, real emotions, director Zaillian blurs them together in silent heartbreak, thus robbing his film of the emotional impact it needs.

Still, weak ideas and sad faces aside, the film’s real problem deals with our own expectations. After the O.J. Simpson debacle and the impeachment trial of our president, we’ve become an audience used to high drama in the courtroom, strong personalities clashing, real life in the riveting throes of justice. Those qualities, unfortunately, are something “A Civil Action” just doesn’t have.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His film reviews appear each Monday and Thursday in the NEWS. Each Thursday on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he appears in The Video Corner.