Birds & Bees Movie:AMERICAN PIE PRESENTS: GIRLS' RULESand YES, GOD, YES

Pity the sex comedy, that endangered species, done under by getting caught between a resurgence of puritanism in Hollywood productions, and the free-wheeling permissiveness available on any social media platform. Add to that the increasing disappearance of mid-budget films and the migration of once-proud genres into distended projects for streamers, plus the tricky social climate, and it’s no wonder studios, let alone filmmakers, are more likely to not even bother. Nonetheless, when we get a rare good sex comedy, like 2015’s Magic Mike XXL or 2018’s Blockers, it succeeds with a broad-minded kindness, centering desire and consent without losing the inherent silliness of interpersonal fumblings and foibles. They’re celebrations, not merely objectifications, of this normal aspect of life. No room for the snickering juvenile leering of the old frat house yuckers and locker room droolers like Revenge of the Nerds or Porky’s, films which were cheap, cruel, and exploitative, even back in their own day, and have aged about as well as a raw egg in the summer sun.

That cultural shift is what makes the curiously evergreen American Pie franchise such an oddity. What began as a quaint, comparatively innocent, cringingly raunchy comedy of teen embarrassment back in 1999 begat a long line of sequels and direct-to-video spinoffs that never quite recaptured the strangely naive vulgarity of the original. Here we are, two decades hence, with the ninth: American Pie Presents: Girls’ Rules. Unlike the first of the series, which follows a group of senior guys hoping to get some experience before college, this one is about some young ladies. About time there’s a better gender balance here, some might say, if hopelessly inclined to pin their progressive hopes solely on the optics of their lowest-common-denominator entertainment. (I’m thinking of the memorable tweet which jokingly described this tendency thusly: conservatives want to lock up their enemies, while some liberals ask for more women guards.) Regardless, this new Pie bakes up nothing more than another batch of flailing sub-sitcom farce and cringing gross-out gags in this tired franchise. In brightly lit, indifferently staged medium shots, director Mike Elliott (one of Universal’s stable of DTV sequel helmers, having tackled the fourth Scorpion King and second Blue Crush) has characters endlessly discuss who is doing what to whom and who wishes to put what where. It’s an endless torrent of profanity, innuendo, and sexual slang. The movie knows the words, but it never once indicates that it knows the feeling. Here are characters who so mechanically discuss desire that their antics are entirely disconnected from genuine human experience. It then sends them through a gauntlet of extreme humiliations—take the opening, in which a nice girl wedgies herself on the top of a fence, falls into a mud puddle, gets a prophylactic stuck in her throat, and falls out the second story window. It wants to be open-minded enough to focus on female desire, but instead finds non-stop punishment. It doesn't let them off easy. At least that’s par for the course for this execrable franchise.

Much better at putting us in the mind of a young woman is Yes, God, Yes. It’s the directorial debut of Karen Maine, who had a story credit on Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, the 2014 Jenny Slate-starring indie rom-com about a woman falling in love while waiting for an abortion. That movie, so sweetly frank, gently funny, and warmly understanding of its characters, is the better picture, but Maine’s new feature shares some of those same qualities. It stars Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer as a student at a Catholic high school. Her stirrings of desire rub up against her upbringing’s expectations. Set in 2001, it’s a story of AOL chats and Titanic on VHS, of whispered rumors among friends and faculty, and a casually stern priest (Timothy Simons) policing the boundaries of expected behavior. Most of the film takes place at a four-day retreat sponsored by her school. There she finds herself lost—feeling alone even in the group, since others are admitting their struggles and sadness and she can’t quite bring herself to admit the feelings with which she’s wrestling. Take an early scene in which the handsome senior football player (Wolfgang Novogratz) greets the group. The camera cuts in tight on his hairy, muscular forearms. Then it cuts back to Dyer, as her eyes flit and stare. An apt period-appropriate pop song pounds onto the soundtrack: “Genie in a Bottle.” It’s clever. The movie admirably sticks to her viewpoint, and the film is quiet and soft, even a little slow, even if some scenes seem to end abruptly. It never quite reaches a good climax. And I wanted more follow through on some character beats. But the sense of space and place is sensitive and its keen understanding of the lead’s alienation and inner conflicts is tender. Would that that grace be extended to some of the supporting characters, who are either casually complicated, or tossed aside for a point. Compared to something similar like the great Miseducation of Cameron Post, and its warm understanding for even its antagonists, this small, slightly more comedic take can’t compete. For how well it knows Dyer's character, it loses nuance around the side characters. Worst is a wise old biker who actually speaks the words “You should check out colleges on the east and west coast” as advice, as if our main character’s dilemmas are uniquely midwestern. So it could be a better movie, but its commitment to close-up portraiture of a particular experience is admirable.

Expect to be Treated Like a Fool No More: OBVIOUS CHILD

Amiable though it is, the indie comedy Obvious Child is nonetheless a clear political act, all the more successful for how unassuming it is. The movie follows Jenny Slate as Donna, a struggling stand-up comic living through her late-twenties in Brooklyn, navigating her relationships both personal and professional. In this story, small and sweet, writer/director Gillian Robespierre uses her directorial debut to tell a good, simple, character-driven story, and assert the basic personhood and agency of women. It’s sad to think that’s controversial in any way in 2014, but here we are and so it can be. Donna is faced with difficult circumstances in this film and arrives at a decision that’s right for her and the people around her. Robespierre deftly walks an attention-grabbing concept down an emotional and tonal tightrope, all the more effective for making her film with specificity in the writing, preserving a sense of healthy respect for a woman’s right to choose her own path.

We first meet Donna when she’s being dumped. In a state of depression she complains to her warm father (Richard Kind) and frostier mother (Polly Draper), cries on the shoulder of her earthy roommate (Gaby Hoffmann), and gets drunk with a stand-up pal (Gabe Liedman). She’s doing shots when she bumps into Max, an attractive stranger (Jake Lacy). Sparks fly. They go back to his place. They dance goofily to a Paul Simon album. They have sex. Through the fog of her hangover the next morning, she’s unsure if she wants this one-night-stand to go any farther. Over the next few weeks, they keep finding their way back into each other’s lives for tentative flirtations in scenes charmingly fluttering with romantic potential. This is all standard cutsey low-key romantic comedy stuff of the indie persuasion, but it’s enlivened by likable performances that convey a sense of specificity to these people and their lives. The movie is about the uncertainty and awkwardness of struggling to get a foothold in a creative industry and making meaningful personal connections, allowing the struggle to sweat it out on the characters’ expressions.

Into this mix comes a notable complication. Donna discovers that she’s pregnant. She decides to have an abortion, but her appointment is a few weeks away (and on Valentine’s Day, of all days). And so she doesn’t tell Max right away, a clear obstacle to figuring out whether she wants to date him. What works for handling a topic like abortion in a comedic context is the way the procedure itself is never a joke and hardly used for cheap dramatic stakes. It’s discussed. (Hoffmann has a line about old white men in black robes making decisions about women’s health that has an extra timely bite after a certain recent Supreme Court ruling.) Nor is the movie saying hers is the only valid decision a woman can make. It’s a fair, nonjudgmental film that looks generously and compassionately on its characters, weighing their feelings with a degree of care. It’s a movie that features calm, productive discussion of abortion without letting it overwhelm the whole. It features as much crude stand-up, flatulence, silly banter, and sarcasm as it does tenderly written and acted scenes of real emotional openness and welcome candor.

The screenplay (from a story by Robespierre and collaborators Karen Maine, Elisabeth Holm, and Anna Bean) sometimes stretches to fill its runtime. It has some weaker, self-absorbed patches and scene-long tangents that feel like typical debut-film bugs. It’s shot simply and modestly. But what makes the movie such an affectionate, positive experience overall is the way it makes clear in all aspects that its characters are specific people who can’t be easily reduced to stock types. Most people, men and women alike, don’t live rom-com lives that conclude happily ever after at the altar or in a delivery room. Here is a movie for people whose idea of a happy romantic comedy ending would be curling up on the couch to watch a movie. How refreshing to see a movie about romance that sweetly embraces the complications of life. In Slate’s performance is a character who is bright, driven, insecure, and struggling, manipulating her voice and mannerisms as if she’s always self-consciously performing, cutting awkwardness with a barbed comment. It’s a terrific, complicated performance in a comedy full of characters with real, convincing presences.

Obvious Child is a movie about characters who make all kinds of decisions about their lives, arriving at them honestly. It’s a film that intends not to score points, but to provoke empathy. Slate makes Donna intensely sympathetic. She may not make it as a stand-up comic. She and Max, good chemistry between the actors aside, may not have a relationship in the future. But the uncertainty of the struggle is what makes them so compelling, and the way they resolve conflicts so understandable. It finds humor in its situations out of what makes its characters tick. Take the scene where she finally confides in her mother. They have the following exchange. Donna: “I’m pregnant and I’m thinking of having an abortion.” Mom: “What a relief. I thought you were going to say you were moving to L.A.”

It’s a small movie, but it is bighearted smallness, humble, personal, funny, and quietly important. And in this particular case, about this subject, that is far more powerful than a screed would ever be. Robespierre has a made a film that’s warm and specific. It allows its characters room to find what works for them at this particular point in their lives. This isn’t a universal recommendation or a solution. It’s freedom. Would that we all could have such freedom of choice.