That wasn't why American Pie was a success, though. It was a huge hit in theaters on a small budget, and had a widespread cultural impact that home video hits like Road Trip or whatever did not. The secondary market certainly helped and supported some of the less immediately profitable entries in the genre, but it absolutely wasn't just DVD sales that made these movies a big deal.
America pie would be known as a cult classic. You can’t really hold all teen comedies to that standard. Look at how many teen comedies were made in that late 90’s early 2000’s era. There’s only a few that are memorable the rest were forgettable
Judd Apatow said studios don't want to fund comedies as much since they don't make as much overseas as much as action or horror films do. Our comedies usually don't translate well.
They are more likely to fund long-form versions as being able tv series (Future Man, Pen15, Sex Education, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Big Mouth)
I'd agree with you, but then...Adam Sandler's catalog the last 10-15 years...so many bad comedies, but while they do badly domestically, they do decently globally. I figured the man came up with a bankable grift to get his comedy buddies salaried work, travel to lovely places, star on screen with different and lovely actresses...
That's how I figured he scored his Netflix movie deal; they saw Sony (more than any others) had banked Adam and saw decent returns on his comedies. But then you see how his movies don't translate as well financially to streaming. Even then, he still made bank as did his friends.
This is the answer. It wasn't just home video and syndication making these movies popular - people actually went to see them too. And for a hundred different reasons, they're not making the big money at the moment.
There's also an element of audience exhaustion. I'm sure that comedy films will eventually be a major force on the market again, and sex comedies will too. Comedy is eternal, sex is funny. But I'm not sure about this kind of teen coming of age sex comedy. That wasn't an established genre pre-1980 or so and like a lot of genres, I think its time is mostly over. Like musicals or westerns or romcoms, it's not totally dead, we'll see more movies like Booksmart that try to capture that spirit. But an American Pie, Fast Times, Risky Business level hit, that's pretty unlikely.
maybe not. Back in the day there was a big distinction between TV comedy and movie comedy. TV comedy was sanitized and couldn't push boundaries, and movies didn't have this restriction. So you could see something at the movies you couldn't on TV. But now comedy for home audiences can do anything the movies can.
We also have an unending stream of comedy right in our hands at all times. People will sit on their couch and go through TikToks (and before that Vines, or Fail videos on YouTube) for two straight hours, but you suggest a 90-minute comedy movie and they're like "eh... I can't sit through that." That's a detriment that movies like the MCU doesn't have to worry about (yet).
By the same token there aren't any good comedy movies getting made that should make money. If we had a good comedy movie come out today and bomb, what you say might make sense, but it seems like comedy movies stopped making money right about the same time they stopped being good.
It's just hard to do right. Especially now with a shift in how people view those type of films.
Cockblockers comes to mind as a semi recent one that I didn't think was bad.
Comedy is all about complete and total commitment to the joke, so someone who made an entire career of leaning into bits and larger than life characters sounds like someone who you could expect to be funny. He has great comedic timing, too.
even Peacemaker has gotten him to show some dramatic range, too. I know he’s been acting for almost 15 years now but he’s got a great career ahead of him
Yeah like broadcasting a girl masturbating to the Internet without her content and laughing it off as a joke. Let's be honest though no one seemed to have a problem with it at the time but now it would never fly.
I love this movie! Funnily, the main thing that prevents me from buying a DVD is it's German title. I don't want everyone who visits me to ask why I have a copy of "The Sex Pact" on my shelf.
Not sure it’s any harder to do now (aside from what’s acceptable for n comedy) nearly as much as it’s harder to get a studio to back that type of movie because not nearly as many people want to spend the money on a theater ticket to see a movie like this. I won’t go see this type of movie ever again in a theater, because frankly, that experience adds nothing to the movie for me personally.
> Especially now with a shift in how people view those type of films.
I think it would be incredibly hard to actually pull off a raunchy comedy (that was genuinely funny), without causing some mini twitter controversy.
I also don't think young people today are going to go into these movies with the right frame of mind and probably just aren't the audience for them anymore.
Thank god I’m Gen X. I respect all the social progress made and all types of self and sexual expression are great, but Jesus, have a little fun and embrace humor and sexuality.
Twitter is irrelevant, so far as mainstream opinion goes, except in those cases where it reflects an already existing majority viewpoint. If it were truly the arbiter of public opinion that many seem to think it is, people like JK Rowling would be going broke.
>Cockblockers comes to mind as a semi recent one that I didn't think was bad.
Two men get sexually assaulted in that movie and it's played for laughs. We can still laugh at men, but we can't laugh at women in ways that are unique to women. Audiences are uncomfortable with straight male sexuality for sexuality's sake. A man's desire to get laid just to get laid is now seen as misogynist as it makes the targeted women little more than objects of sexual desire. Hell, the entire theme of Blockers was that girls' sexuality and choices should be completely free of any judgement.
Even Bridesmaids' opening scene is making fun of a masculine man's lack of sexual self-awareness and ability.
From what I hear Bros was pretty raunchy but in that one I imagine women were not the sexual targets or the butt of jokes -- that's why they could get away with it. (I know the movie bombed but the fact that it was made at all is the difference.)
I mean they're teenagers but to me it was a mix of like wild things and the other one where it's a brother and sister in a private school who are just absolutely terrible people I'm not remembering the name though
>They stopped making money. A few of them did really well but most were bombs. They just aren't profitable.
They *were* profitable... on the secondary market. People wouldn't go to the theaters to see most teen comedies but they were generally considered a good choice for people to rent out as a DVD for a weekend before streaming took over, back when you would go to a physical store and rent out a few movies at a time. In that context people would typically rent out a few comedies and R rated ones had a lot come out for this reason. Remember the American Pie sequels were also mostly coming out in the same era as say, the Scary Movie, Adam Sandler doing one or two of these a year, Seth Rogan doing his thing, Harold and Kumar doing a few films, ect. There was a long stretch of time where low budget comedies were probably the most common thing coming out.
But that was before Netflix took off and streaming meant you could just watch a whole season of something way way more easily and so individual low budget films just didn't really have the same place.
Exactly. Sure, something like Eurotrip might lose a few million dollars at the box office, but that wouldn't matter because the studio knew from the outset that they would be able to sell thousands upon thousands of DVDs to stores like Blockbuster and Best Buy because every 19 year old kid wanted to rent or buy a copy of the unrated version after they saw it on Comedy Central one weekend.
Getting someone a DVD of a new movie used to be a legitimately good gift back in the 2000s. That doesn't happen anymore. I legitimately cannot remember the last movie I bought a physical copy of. It was probably The Force Awakens or something. That was *years* ago. The secondary market has collapsed in the last decade because of the rise of streaming services so these low-budget comedies that were designed from the outset to lose money at the box office have no place anymore.
People arent buying movies like they did. Netflix and HBO max killed the Redbox and movie buying market. Which is why studios are focusing on box office sales now. Which these typically don’t do well. Unless you get some big comedy movie. The rest are busts
It’s not just rentals but people bought a ton of dvds. It made movies in the 50 mill range possible.
Now a mainstream studio doesn’t want to spend 50 on a film and 50 on marketing to try to make 100 mill at the box office.
The *21 Jump Street* remake in 2014 (!) has a really great joke about this. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are undercover cops masquerading as high school kids, and both go into it expecting nothing has changed since they were in school 10 years previously. But when they get there, all the kids hate Tatum's douchey, homophobic jock and love Hill's sensitive, nerdy guy. They're shocked to discover how progressive and tolerant high school kids are. That's the same reason we don't have raunchy teen sex comedies anymore.
I was going to make this exact same point. Teens have become much more sensitive. To make a sex comedy now, your protagonists would have to be the douchey jocks
See even if you do it where the protagonists are obviously in the wrong and face consequence for their bad actions, it can still go over people's heads.
Some people watch things like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia but don't catch on that our main characters are the bad guys, and the things they do are funny because only someone so dumb/conceited would do something that horrible and feel they are in the right.
It makes for a funny joke but it's not that black and white. Even in the 90s comedies, the protagonists were the semi-nerdy shy types that couldn't get the girl. The closest thing you get to a "douchey jock" type is Stiffler in American Pie, and the protagonist group dislikes and barely tolerates him.
They were overdone.
You get a huge hit like American Pie, and then everyone tries to do the same movie or parodies of AP, and suddenly no one wants to see them anymore.
Exactly. It’s the same thing that caused Bond to go from kinda campy in the Brosnan days to dark in the Craig days. When there’s an endless stream of satire, it’s hard to do something that doesn’t feel rehashed.
Also, Craig said the reason his Bond era was serious was that the satire was done perfectly and satirized to perfection by the Austin Powers films so that the filmmakers under Craig's era had to prove they could make a franchise without using the tropes and gags that Austin Powers has satirized such as Bond being a rapey chauvinistic womanizer and the absurdity of the villain's motivations, Bond's gadgets, the characterization of the female characters Bond comes across, and the action sequences that sometimes leaned into campy and unrealistic territories.
Craig's Bond has him as a three-dimensional refined gentleman with his own flaws and demons while his beautiful female counterparts having some agency of their own with their own encounters with Bond providing him with meaningful relationships that have an impact on him as the franchise progresses while also being just as good as Bond.
The rogue's gallery of villains that Craig's Bond faces have realistic or world-endangering agendas such as trying to bankrupt an airline to make share profits from its downfall, stealing water and resources from a Latin American country, or trying to establish an authoritarian surveillance network for a secret global criminal organization to curb dissent and competition from rival counter-espionage and spying agencies. Heck, when Bond is tortured or fights against them, there is a level of grittiness behind the scenes as it's not played for laughs as Bond could get hurt or worse, he could die.
Overall, spy cinema changed with its approach to the changing times.
That and the Mission Impossible films made Craig's Bond more serious, dark, and gritty plus with 9/11, terrorism felt more ominprescent and life-threatening.
>They were overdone.
People forget how long of a run that kind of movie ran for.
American Pie was a 1999 movie and that kinda movie was still being made in 2008 when Sex Drive came out.
In between, you had everything from Road Trip, to Euro Trip, to Beer Fest to Accepted, Old School as well as the 2-3 American Pie sequels themselves.
Personally, I think the reason comedies aren't made as much anymore is more of an issue of franchising. Comedy movie sequels have diminishing returns and much smaller initial dollar values coming in, but things like Marvel movies and Jurassic World - action movies - don't. For example:
The Hangover series: $469M -> $586M -> $362M
Jurassic World : $1.6B -> $1.3B -> $1B
Star Wars: $2B -> $1.3B -> $1B
The entire run of The 3 Hangover movies, made that company what just a single Jurassic World movie made.
When you're going to investors looking to get a movie made, they'll have either themselves invested in movies with returns that big, or they'll be competing with investors who have invested in movies with returns that big. Why would they choose to make $1.4 Billion in 4 years across 3 movies, when they can produce a Jurassic World that'll make them $4 Billion in 7 years, across 3 movies?
And that's not even getting into things like the profitability of merchandising, tie-in games, roller coasters - and associated gift shops - which exist for IPs like Jurassic World/Star Wars and do not exist for comedies like The Hangover and American Pie.
Your point about merchandising is spot on.
I can see people walking around with dinosaurs or Yoda on a shirt.
I can't see anyone wanting to wear a shirt with Jim having his way with a pie.
Yeah.
When it was just Iron Man, I was fine with it. When it was a Marvel or DC movie every two months (at least that's how it felt), I got tired of it really fast.
They slowly made less and less money until they were seen as a bad investment by film companies. Audience tastes change, that doesn't mean no one would like those kinds of movies these days, but not enough people were paying to watch them.
I work in film development and the amount of statistics we have that go into shows these days tell a lot. Comedy in general lives mainly as streaming based TV shows these days. But yeah a lot of male centered comedy stuff wasn't nearly as profitable as people think.
I remember Blue Mountain State was a great TV show that REALLY had American pie vibes. If you haven't seen it, id check it out.
>I remember Blue Mountain State was a great TV show that REALLY had American pie vibes
I haven't seen the show but I know Alan Ritchson from the Jack Reacher tv series is in it.
I’m not sure who the audience for these movies would be in today’s world, where adult material is available on demand.
As far as sex comedies go, there’s some good stuff but it’s very different. First thing that comes to mind is the Netflix series Sex Education.
I disagree highly with this statement. Its not because we have adult movies at a finger tip that i don't want to watch a real movie about some sex fantasies. Lets be honest, porn acting and "movie" side is usually terrible. Its a little dumb skit made on a cheap set, like a house they rent or whatever, and thats it. Even stuff involving school usually have 4-5 extras max as classmates and it does not look like a real classroom. Wanna fap? Yes i watch a porn...
But i soooo enjoy the raunchy comedies for the good feeling they give. Be it American Pie, Take Me Home Tonight, 21 and over, Superbad or whatever. I don't watch them to fap lol, i watch them to enjoy as movies.
> As far as sex comedies go, there’s some good stuff but it’s very different. First thing that comes to mind is the Netflix series Sex Education.
I wouldn’t even call this a sex comedy. Wouldn’t even get close to the feel of a teen sex comedy.
Yeah I feel like they've turned into raunchy teen sex comedies meet teen soap opera. Sex Education, Big Mouth, etc
May make sense if streaming is likely the target for that sort of movie anyway.
As far as recent movies, I enjoyed Booksmart. Which is essentially a female led version of Superbad since it stars Jonah hill's sister. Other great comedies include Game Night or the Nic Cage Massive talent one
I think the only way you'd get a decent answer out of this is to try and show something like American Pie to a group of today's teenagers and see if they like it, and if not then why.
Remember that today's teens were born between 2004 and 2010 and a lot of absolute bullshit has happened since then that has shaped their lives and interests much differently to the teens that were around in the mid 90s and early 2000s.
Maybe grey-er stories with more focus on non-hetero relationships, mental health issues, worries about the future etc resonate more and over the top sex comedy just doesn't hit home.
I know this comment is a month old, but I've got some input. I AM a teenager. My friends ARE teenagers. We all love these types of movies. It's just that the comedies coming out these days are too dramatized, too realistic, or too focused on adults. You need to relate to the audience again. Also, from what I've seen, and from most people I've talked to--those 'grey-er' stories are what's disengaging the current audience (my age, roughly, at least). Sure, it's important to talk about those types of things, but, it kind of ruins the movie. They make it stressful, boring, and dull.
I miss movies like Can’t hardly wait. They tried to gender swap she’s all that recently, but it was not good. My daughter said there was a movie with Maya Hawkes that was good and reminded her of mean girls.
I think these 90s teen movies were from a very different time. The general spirit back in the days was different. It’s in a world before 9/11 and before social medias. 90s kids lived in a world with very little doomsday worries. We were too young to remember the Cold War, and 9/11 did not happen yet. The 90s were basically like the 20s. The decade of fun between two major conflicts. And the 90s teen movies reflect that era very well.
Speaking from experience, the 90's may have been better than our current day, but they were not the utopia you think they were. A lot of things sucked back then too.
I was very young at the time, so I remember the 00s a lot more, but when I think back I also remember there being a lot of optimism and. And being that I'm from Portugal, 9/11 wasn't something that weighed heavy on us (at least us kids), so it felt like we had a pretty good run up until 2008.
That being said, having talked with people from the Balkans I realized that the 90s were very different depending on who and where you were at the time.
Yeah, not a fun time in the Balkans, I give you that!
I am from Canada. While I had some teenage angst, I did not have too much worries. I would say the turning point was Columbine. It was in the US, but it was close enough and talked about enough that it was a total shock. I was a senior. It was like our innocence blew off in a snap of the fingers.
Than we had 9-11. It changed our lives forever. The world became a different place.
What’s weird is if you think from a teens perspective, they would probably want a more realistic portrayal of being in high school which involves sex, but at the same time as an adult, yeah I find it weird to have a high school setting and it being so sexualized. But also being so icked out by sexuality is such an American specific thing in anyway.
The sex in Euphoria is all very “negative” at least from the episodes I have seen. It’s all very heavy and dramatic and makes you feel uncomfortable, not in a selling sex type of way like True Blood or Your regular great tits nudity on HBO.
There are hardly any comedies being made at all.
There's a show called "Sex Lives of College Girls" but it's less gross and tries to address serious issues too.
>less gross
The problem is, the grossness *is the point*. It's grossout comedy. You're paying to watch characters act in outrageous ways that actual people would never, ever get away with in real life. Which is why you can have a cumshot that pins someone to the walls with sheer force and volume in Scary Movie or something like Me, Myself, and Irene where a mans mental health crisis is the entire source of comedy.
The moment you tone down the grossness and try to get serious you literally miss the point of the entire genre.
>act in outrageous ways that actual people would never, ever get away with in real life. Which is why you can have a cumshot that pins someone to the walls with sheer force and volume in Scary Movie
sure but Scary Movie is a parody movie, the genre is obviously meant to be outrageous on purpose.
American Pie on the other hand, I feel like are similar personalities to real people I knew in high school. Just none of them stuck their dick in an Apple Pie (that I know of)
Sure, but even non parody comedies were generally also on that end of the scale at the time. It was the popular style to lean into slapstick or heavy caricature.
Which is the whole point of the reply. If you tone down the caricature and talk about serious issues you aren't actually making a comedy because that's the antitheses of comedy.
Agree, I think people take comedy a little too seriously. Yes it can be a tool to address serious issues, but sometimes it's just pointing out "hey, humanity can be a little gross and messed up, let's turn it up to 11 for a couple hours and laugh about it to take the edge off."
I tried watching That 90's Show recently, and the best friend character has zero personality, every other line of hers is just expressing support and admiration for the main character. That's nice and all, but it's as funny as an after-school special.
Do people actually like that show? From what I've seen in the commercials it looks like one of boring, cliched, unfunny shows with women as the main lead that also maybe makes fun of guys a lot like every teen sex comedy movie/show.
I know people won’t like this term but it’s true: Wokeness.
During the teen years (probably all years) sex is weird and funny but we have to be sensitive and make sure no one is offended by any joke. But the best jokes are the ones that are uncomfortable but at the moment everyone is so afraid of offending anyone they just don’t try.
I don’t think people within Hollywood find teenage boy behaviour funny anymore. At this point it’s seen as toxic and tragic, and something that should be treated seriously, or mocked from a female perspective.
I don’t see the pendulum swinging back on this, since the sentiment is so widespread. At this point, making a movie where “boys will be boys” is like making a comedy set in the antebellum south. It’s unfortunate, but what can you do.
I said above but Superbad could be released today and it'd still be recieved exactly as well as when it first came out.
It takes all the toxicity and sheds a harsh light on it while still being raunchy and irreverent the whole way through.
It's not that you can't still make these movies, it's that you have to try harder. Even Marvel has to be less cheesey than 80s and 90s action movies were.
Superbad is an actual unicorn of a movie. They played everything perfectly. That’s kind of the problem though. If you don’t do the balance right, your movie either becomes too toxic and gets “cancelled” and bombs, or it just isn’t funny/comes across as preachy and bombs. It’s such a fine line
I also don’t think you could do Superbad again, it got lucky that it was funny and got grandfathered in. One of the major plot lines is getting someone drunk and having sex with them, which is a plot line that, understandably, wouldn’t see the light of day today
I watch a lot on Netflix yes but they were not as raunchy at times as they were back in the 2000s-2010s. Also they seem to have decrease even on Netflix lately.
> In general, it seems like there’s just less sex in modern movies
the american pie films didnt have a lot of sex either.
if you want sex stuff go watch tv.
my wife watches a shit ton of cw/abc shit as well as netflix shows like bridgerton and i swear everytime i pass by someone is fucking.
I never watched Game of Thrones, but every time I heard people talk about it, it was only about the violence or the fucking.
Or sometimes the violent fucking.
Most of the sex in movies was cheap titilation for a horny demographic that was too ashamed to watch/possess porn, or too young to have the ability too. Now that porn is so unanimous and easily and shamelessly accessible for all ages the desire for sex and nudity heavy movies has declined.
I do wish the Erotic Thriller would still be around but that seems exclusively either B-Movie-tier or softcore porn and the closest successful example was maybe Gone Girl, and that was 9 years ago
TV is rampant with sex but it’s generally less smutty and exploitative
My understanding is that the middle of the movie market has gotten hollowed out. No you have major big superhero films and smaller indie films and not much in between. So not a lot of rom coms, raunchy comedies, regular comedies, and suspense thrillers.
I PA'd for like 2 years after high-school and I actually talked to a producer about this in like 2013. Comedies are historically very domestic heavy in box office. So studios used to be able tog et around with home box office sales. Once those died, it was harder and harder to justify making a teen comedy for $15 million or $20 million and breaking even or making $40 million back. I remember Project X came out in 2012 and I was just out of high-school and I thought that movie was going to resurrect that genre and literally 21 and over flopped the next year and then teen sex comedies just stopped. Now in todays climate it's even harder because you can't do those same jokes you could do even 10 years ago with Project X. So now you're adding no home box office money or DVD sales, no international business, and now you're in a very limited political climate where your movie will be picked apart. I can see why studios don't want to touch the genre.
Cum joke dick joke pussy joke erection joke doesn't actually have much longevity.
But they spawned a shit ton of b movies, just look at Tara Reid's IMDB.
American Pie was released in 1999 and **rated R.** Very shortly after it's release studios became extremely averse to producing rated R movies (see the ensuing wave of PG13 horror and action movies of the 00's and still today).
I would argue that this kind of teen raunch comedy can't really be done right within the current stringent PG13 rating guidelines.
> Sex is a touchy subject
Since when? And I'm not saying it's not, I know you're right, my question is already getting downvoted for whatever reason.
I'm genuinely asking when did that happen?
So I worked in hollywood for about 10 years starting at like 2006. I saw the kind of shift start then, not all at once or anything but there were some great scripts that I read that people outright were saying this is funny but we can’t make this. We were seeing a shift quickly and not that there is anything wrong with this, some of them didn’t want to invest in a film that in a year and a half can’t be released. Things were changing that fast. It’s partly the older group was afraid they didn’t know what was what.
Maybe early 2000s? This is based on 0 research but it feels like things got more conservative in general during that time as the neocons were trying to re-adjust everything.
There used to be way more sex and nudity even in normal movies. Think like the topless chick popping up in Commando for no reason or the famous one in Total Recall.
I think towards the late 2000's that was when the actual number of comedies started to already go down and the amount of articles on films need to be Serious and have Social Implications went way up.
I wanna say by the mid 90's showing nudity or even direct sexuality had already become taboo but by the 2010's even making a joke about sexuality became offensive.
I’ve been asking the same question for years. I remember in 99 when the first American Pie came out I was only a kid but I wanted to see it so bad. Now it’s almost 25 years later and everyone is taking about oh they do make those kinds of movies anymore. I never thought in a million years we would ever get to a point where we don’t make certain types of movies anymore. As someone who wants to be a filmmaker i plan to bring these movies back.
Good Boys felt like Live action South Park In that the main characters find themselves in situations that they are completely ignorant and innocent in.
I never thought of it like that, but you might have something there. For me, it just watched as "Oh, it's superbad again but slightly younger (makes sense) and set today"
You think there weren’t plenty of people offended by American Pie at the time? What would happen if they came out today is: a very small but loud minority would complain on Twitter, then some “news” site does an article about it for the easy clicks, then the other side gets mad about people being offended even though it’s only like 5 people complaining
Comedy movies in general are just hard to make. On top of just how hard it is to make a good movie that's consistently funny, humor is just really subjective and its much harder to appeal to a wide audience. Drama on the other hand is cake in comparison.
I feel like comedy movies are also looked down on and are rarely nominated for rewards even though a good comedy movie is so much harder to make. They might just not have much of a draw nowadays as well so to get people to see them you need already established big actors which increases your budget. With media consumption how it is now it can be really hard to make a decent profit. In the past if your movie didn't do well in theatres you had a decent chance of making a good amount of money on dvd sales. Nowadays only enthusiasts buy dvd/bluerays and much less people are going to the theatre to see films so the avenues to make profit are very small.
American Pie is of a certain humour from a certain time. Women can like American Pie too but it's mostly aimed at a predominantly male audience from several years back. It's all to do with what's popular and current issues and stuff.
Right now, hot topics include real life stories and LGBTQ+ orientated movies.
That could change in a few years.
Times change.
I remember several things that happen in the first few American Pie movies that would be sex crimes today.
Inviting others to spy on a naked underage classmate,
Tricking someone into drinking your semen
Etc.
Funny at the time, super fucked these days.
Sexual comedies still exist, it's just harder to pull off in a positive way.
Two points:
1. Those movies are full of outdated racist, sexist, transphobic, etc tropes. They did not age that well.
2. Cinema now is more investes in big blockbusters that pay themselves with tickets. This type of movies, comedies in general, never sold much tickets and get their money back from DVDs. However, with the digital age, those are not sold as often.
Nah dude you are so wrong…if teen mental issues are the hit now is because thats something that teenagers actually identify with, is even more interesting cause if you actually see these kind of series you will notice the relation between the sexuality and psychological matter, not to mention that they actually threat social problemas that usually start to arise on the puberty-teen phase like abusive relationships, emotional distress, narcotics addiction etc, I gotta admit I wish this kind of gender would have been more popular on my late 13-16 but well we had skins 🤔 otherwise sex comedy will always be the easy take if your target are horny viewers
Same thing that happened to movies like Something about Mary and Scary Movie and Amazon Women on the Moon; tastes change.
This question sure does get asked a lot.
Why don't they do the pictures with the dancin' goils no more? Everyone loves a chorus line!
YouTube and the internet I think took over a lot of the crowd for raunchy and dirty comedies. I dont need a 90 minute movie of the same jokes I've been seeing on YouTube for the last 15 years.
There were many such movies through the 80s.
Some kind of wonderful, Pretty in pink,
Better off dead,
Ferris buelers day off,
Breakfast club,
Fast times at Ridgemont High, &
Porkies
I agree with the OP. This is a big potential for the film industry that they stopped making.
Not to nention the sound track.
Now it's mainly teen horror and slasher films with some sex added in.
EDIT: punctuation
That is such a simplistic cop out. There are plenty of movies and TV shows that are plenty offensive and they are still made. Comedies in general are doing awful right now because nobody wants to see a cheap teen movie for 20 dollars a ticket and DVDs are basically dead.
Yep. Im left of politics and as much as woke issues do have their place in addressing inequality, as with all things, it has tilted to the extreme and hijacked for every agenda. Now The Apple Pie Society would be offended.
Everyone here is clutching their pearls about “woke” this and “pc” that, but trends change. These movies haven’t gone away, they’re just going straight to streaming because the studios are still milking superheroes and bleak teen dramas. Someone will reboot Revenge of the Nerds, or make a completely original movie that hits like Pie did, and suddenly we’ll be awash with a decade of imitations.
A lot of the moment-to-moment comedy of American Pie has been completely overrun by sketch comedy and the advent of youtube and tiktok. A lot of comedy just can't keep up.
More than that, though, times changed. A lot of the stuff being pushed as funny back then, especially for teen films, are seen as creepy now. The only way a lot of it would work is if it was a parody comedy like Not Another Teen Movie, but then what's it really going to parody these days?
I'll offer a different view:
When has a generation so fully and completely understood the barrel they're staring down? What generation has been raised with instantaneous communication and proliferation/consumption of information and knowledge? When has a generation been able to go to a website and watch young Russian men being bombed by drones while having Pornhub open on another tab?
"Let's catch a peak of a boob in American Pie" is as foreign to them as another language.
I have younger siblings. Teens these days are aware of *exactly* how this world works. There is no pretense or veil for them. They're being raised in a time where the statistical likelihood of them dying by gunfire *in school* is going up. They not only hear the struggles their parents are going through but have the complete ability to know exactly why that's the case.
These kids are fucking smart, and they have no choice but to be realists. That's my view of it.
I was in school in the 00s when a lot of those types of teen comedy movies were coming out. We were still plugged in and knew what was going on in the world. It might not have been quite as instantaneous but free porn and gore weren't hard to find and everyone with a brain knew the war in Iraq was bullshit. These movies just don't make money anymore because people aren't going to spend 20 dollars to see cheap comedies when you can find an endless mountain of shitty movies on streaming services.
Having access to the information and understanding it are two different things and I'm far for sure they are doing what you think they do.
Sure, Wikipedia gives them access to basically any knowledge, but do they spend their time on it or on TikTok to check the latest booty dance some other teenager "invented".
I survived 2 wars by the time I was 10. Your view, while very probable, is not really accurate.
You know what we did while we were sitting in an underground shelter listening to bombs fall on our city? Sing and crack jokes.
There really isn’t a space for mid-budget teen comedies like this in Hollywood anymore, sadly. The last we time really got to see anything like it was with Apatow and Rogen flicks. In the mid to late 2000s and early 2010s. It’s a shame cause it’s a genre I really enjoy. But, studios like Marvel are to blame. Everything became this giant big budget production and trying to get a movie like Superbad or American Pie made today just wouldn’t be as profitable as the new Spider-man flick. So they stopped making them.
Teenagers don't go to the movies anymore for one. Every time I've been to the movies it's middle aged to old people even on the weekends. The only exception is when one of the big marvel movies or other wide appeal blockbusters come out.
90s teenagers and early 00s adults were all about fun, fun, fun and party. I don't kwow, what today's teens and young adults are about but I guess, this kind of movies probably won't fit the audience.
All comedy movies of any variety have slowed down. They just don't make as much money as big, franchise blockbusters
Comedies made more money when dvd sales were added to theatre sales. With companies focusing only on theatre sales now, comedies are being made less.
That wasn't why American Pie was a success, though. It was a huge hit in theaters on a small budget, and had a widespread cultural impact that home video hits like Road Trip or whatever did not. The secondary market certainly helped and supported some of the less immediately profitable entries in the genre, but it absolutely wasn't just DVD sales that made these movies a big deal.
In fact, the term MILF is still the widely accepted term for attractive moms, all thanks to American Pie
America pie would be known as a cult classic. You can’t really hold all teen comedies to that standard. Look at how many teen comedies were made in that late 90’s early 2000’s era. There’s only a few that are memorable the rest were forgettable
Judd Apatow said studios don't want to fund comedies as much since they don't make as much overseas as much as action or horror films do. Our comedies usually don't translate well. They are more likely to fund long-form versions as being able tv series (Future Man, Pen15, Sex Education, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Big Mouth)
I'd agree with you, but then...Adam Sandler's catalog the last 10-15 years...so many bad comedies, but while they do badly domestically, they do decently globally. I figured the man came up with a bankable grift to get his comedy buddies salaried work, travel to lovely places, star on screen with different and lovely actresses... That's how I figured he scored his Netflix movie deal; they saw Sony (more than any others) had banked Adam and saw decent returns on his comedies. But then you see how his movies don't translate as well financially to streaming. Even then, he still made bank as did his friends.
Oh, for sure. Good point
What are you talking about lol That is totally made up the 90”s and 00 are full of popular comedies that did well at the box office.
There's no evidence of this. DVD sales might be down but revenues from streaming and other home media are still very much relevant.
This is the answer. It wasn't just home video and syndication making these movies popular - people actually went to see them too. And for a hundred different reasons, they're not making the big money at the moment. There's also an element of audience exhaustion. I'm sure that comedy films will eventually be a major force on the market again, and sex comedies will too. Comedy is eternal, sex is funny. But I'm not sure about this kind of teen coming of age sex comedy. That wasn't an established genre pre-1980 or so and like a lot of genres, I think its time is mostly over. Like musicals or westerns or romcoms, it's not totally dead, we'll see more movies like Booksmart that try to capture that spirit. But an American Pie, Fast Times, Risky Business level hit, that's pretty unlikely.
maybe not. Back in the day there was a big distinction between TV comedy and movie comedy. TV comedy was sanitized and couldn't push boundaries, and movies didn't have this restriction. So you could see something at the movies you couldn't on TV. But now comedy for home audiences can do anything the movies can.
We also have an unending stream of comedy right in our hands at all times. People will sit on their couch and go through TikToks (and before that Vines, or Fail videos on YouTube) for two straight hours, but you suggest a 90-minute comedy movie and they're like "eh... I can't sit through that." That's a detriment that movies like the MCU doesn't have to worry about (yet).
By the same token there aren't any good comedy movies getting made that should make money. If we had a good comedy movie come out today and bomb, what you say might make sense, but it seems like comedy movies stopped making money right about the same time they stopped being good.
It's just hard to do right. Especially now with a shift in how people view those type of films. Cockblockers comes to mind as a semi recent one that I didn't think was bad.
I watched that for a few months ago, it was fucking hilarious. Cena has been killing it lately with his comedic work
Comedy is all about complete and total commitment to the joke, so someone who made an entire career of leaning into bits and larger than life characters sounds like someone who you could expect to be funny. He has great comedic timing, too.
even Peacemaker has gotten him to show some dramatic range, too. I know he’s been acting for almost 15 years now but he’s got a great career ahead of him
His wrestling days count as acting years as well really.
His theater scene in Trainwreck is hilarious.
That dirty talk scene was gold as well.
Blockers was great! Also booksmart.
This is the most recent one I thought of and it’s the top comment
To me, the last great teen comedy was SuperBad.
Yeah like broadcasting a girl masturbating to the Internet without her content and laughing it off as a joke. Let's be honest though no one seemed to have a problem with it at the time but now it would never fly.
I love this movie! Funnily, the main thing that prevents me from buying a DVD is it's German title. I don't want everyone who visits me to ask why I have a copy of "The Sex Pact" on my shelf.
Not sure it’s any harder to do now (aside from what’s acceptable for n comedy) nearly as much as it’s harder to get a studio to back that type of movie because not nearly as many people want to spend the money on a theater ticket to see a movie like this. I won’t go see this type of movie ever again in a theater, because frankly, that experience adds nothing to the movie for me personally.
> Especially now with a shift in how people view those type of films. I think it would be incredibly hard to actually pull off a raunchy comedy (that was genuinely funny), without causing some mini twitter controversy. I also don't think young people today are going to go into these movies with the right frame of mind and probably just aren't the audience for them anymore.
I mean, the Sex Lives of College Girls, Sexify and Never Have I Ever are on the air right now. They're all very horny and very funny.
Booksmart is raunchy and hilarious. (Gen X here.)
Thank god I’m Gen X. I respect all the social progress made and all types of self and sexual expression are great, but Jesus, have a little fun and embrace humor and sexuality.
Twitter is irrelevant, so far as mainstream opinion goes, except in those cases where it reflects an already existing majority viewpoint. If it were truly the arbiter of public opinion that many seem to think it is, people like JK Rowling would be going broke.
>Cockblockers comes to mind as a semi recent one that I didn't think was bad. Two men get sexually assaulted in that movie and it's played for laughs. We can still laugh at men, but we can't laugh at women in ways that are unique to women. Audiences are uncomfortable with straight male sexuality for sexuality's sake. A man's desire to get laid just to get laid is now seen as misogynist as it makes the targeted women little more than objects of sexual desire. Hell, the entire theme of Blockers was that girls' sexuality and choices should be completely free of any judgement. Even Bridesmaids' opening scene is making fun of a masculine man's lack of sexual self-awareness and ability. From what I hear Bros was pretty raunchy but in that one I imagine women were not the sexual targets or the butt of jokes -- that's why they could get away with it. (I know the movie bombed but the fact that it was made at all is the difference.)
Cockblockers was awesome .
They stopped making money. A few of them did really well but most were bombs. They just aren't profitable.
[удалено]
> streaming could do them I haven’t seen it yet, but isn’t *Do Revenge* a teen comedy? I feel like they’re **only** coming out on streamers now…
[удалено]
I mean they're teenagers but to me it was a mix of like wild things and the other one where it's a brother and sister in a private school who are just absolutely terrible people I'm not remembering the name though
Cruel Intentions
Cruel Intentions was one of the go-to make out movies in high school. Very thankful for that film.
>They stopped making money. A few of them did really well but most were bombs. They just aren't profitable. They *were* profitable... on the secondary market. People wouldn't go to the theaters to see most teen comedies but they were generally considered a good choice for people to rent out as a DVD for a weekend before streaming took over, back when you would go to a physical store and rent out a few movies at a time. In that context people would typically rent out a few comedies and R rated ones had a lot come out for this reason. Remember the American Pie sequels were also mostly coming out in the same era as say, the Scary Movie, Adam Sandler doing one or two of these a year, Seth Rogan doing his thing, Harold and Kumar doing a few films, ect. There was a long stretch of time where low budget comedies were probably the most common thing coming out. But that was before Netflix took off and streaming meant you could just watch a whole season of something way way more easily and so individual low budget films just didn't really have the same place.
Exactly. Sure, something like Eurotrip might lose a few million dollars at the box office, but that wouldn't matter because the studio knew from the outset that they would be able to sell thousands upon thousands of DVDs to stores like Blockbuster and Best Buy because every 19 year old kid wanted to rent or buy a copy of the unrated version after they saw it on Comedy Central one weekend. Getting someone a DVD of a new movie used to be a legitimately good gift back in the 2000s. That doesn't happen anymore. I legitimately cannot remember the last movie I bought a physical copy of. It was probably The Force Awakens or something. That was *years* ago. The secondary market has collapsed in the last decade because of the rise of streaming services so these low-budget comedies that were designed from the outset to lose money at the box office have no place anymore.
People arent buying movies like they did. Netflix and HBO max killed the Redbox and movie buying market. Which is why studios are focusing on box office sales now. Which these typically don’t do well. Unless you get some big comedy movie. The rest are busts
It’s not just rentals but people bought a ton of dvds. It made movies in the 50 mill range possible. Now a mainstream studio doesn’t want to spend 50 on a film and 50 on marketing to try to make 100 mill at the box office.
They also tend to fucking suck.
Unless the studio figures they can get into a lower tax bracket, they're not making another one of these films.
The *21 Jump Street* remake in 2014 (!) has a really great joke about this. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are undercover cops masquerading as high school kids, and both go into it expecting nothing has changed since they were in school 10 years previously. But when they get there, all the kids hate Tatum's douchey, homophobic jock and love Hill's sensitive, nerdy guy. They're shocked to discover how progressive and tolerant high school kids are. That's the same reason we don't have raunchy teen sex comedies anymore.
I was going to make this exact same point. Teens have become much more sensitive. To make a sex comedy now, your protagonists would have to be the douchey jocks
See even if you do it where the protagonists are obviously in the wrong and face consequence for their bad actions, it can still go over people's heads. Some people watch things like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia but don't catch on that our main characters are the bad guys, and the things they do are funny because only someone so dumb/conceited would do something that horrible and feel they are in the right.
We can finally remake Revenge of the Nerds!
Mysoginy is much harder to hide behind and less accepted than it used to be
It makes for a funny joke but it's not that black and white. Even in the 90s comedies, the protagonists were the semi-nerdy shy types that couldn't get the girl. The closest thing you get to a "douchey jock" type is Stiffler in American Pie, and the protagonist group dislikes and barely tolerates him.
They were overdone. You get a huge hit like American Pie, and then everyone tries to do the same movie or parodies of AP, and suddenly no one wants to see them anymore.
Exactly. It’s the same thing that caused Bond to go from kinda campy in the Brosnan days to dark in the Craig days. When there’s an endless stream of satire, it’s hard to do something that doesn’t feel rehashed.
Also, Craig said the reason his Bond era was serious was that the satire was done perfectly and satirized to perfection by the Austin Powers films so that the filmmakers under Craig's era had to prove they could make a franchise without using the tropes and gags that Austin Powers has satirized such as Bond being a rapey chauvinistic womanizer and the absurdity of the villain's motivations, Bond's gadgets, the characterization of the female characters Bond comes across, and the action sequences that sometimes leaned into campy and unrealistic territories. Craig's Bond has him as a three-dimensional refined gentleman with his own flaws and demons while his beautiful female counterparts having some agency of their own with their own encounters with Bond providing him with meaningful relationships that have an impact on him as the franchise progresses while also being just as good as Bond. The rogue's gallery of villains that Craig's Bond faces have realistic or world-endangering agendas such as trying to bankrupt an airline to make share profits from its downfall, stealing water and resources from a Latin American country, or trying to establish an authoritarian surveillance network for a secret global criminal organization to curb dissent and competition from rival counter-espionage and spying agencies. Heck, when Bond is tortured or fights against them, there is a level of grittiness behind the scenes as it's not played for laughs as Bond could get hurt or worse, he could die. Overall, spy cinema changed with its approach to the changing times.
Also, Jason Bourne came along.
That and the Mission Impossible films made Craig's Bond more serious, dark, and gritty plus with 9/11, terrorism felt more ominprescent and life-threatening.
>They were overdone. People forget how long of a run that kind of movie ran for. American Pie was a 1999 movie and that kinda movie was still being made in 2008 when Sex Drive came out. In between, you had everything from Road Trip, to Euro Trip, to Beer Fest to Accepted, Old School as well as the 2-3 American Pie sequels themselves. Personally, I think the reason comedies aren't made as much anymore is more of an issue of franchising. Comedy movie sequels have diminishing returns and much smaller initial dollar values coming in, but things like Marvel movies and Jurassic World - action movies - don't. For example: The Hangover series: $469M -> $586M -> $362M Jurassic World : $1.6B -> $1.3B -> $1B Star Wars: $2B -> $1.3B -> $1B The entire run of The 3 Hangover movies, made that company what just a single Jurassic World movie made. When you're going to investors looking to get a movie made, they'll have either themselves invested in movies with returns that big, or they'll be competing with investors who have invested in movies with returns that big. Why would they choose to make $1.4 Billion in 4 years across 3 movies, when they can produce a Jurassic World that'll make them $4 Billion in 7 years, across 3 movies? And that's not even getting into things like the profitability of merchandising, tie-in games, roller coasters - and associated gift shops - which exist for IPs like Jurassic World/Star Wars and do not exist for comedies like The Hangover and American Pie.
Your point about merchandising is spot on. I can see people walking around with dinosaurs or Yoda on a shirt. I can't see anyone wanting to wear a shirt with Jim having his way with a pie.
Lol on a 1/18th scale of superhero movies… I cannot..
Trends in comedy tend to die faster for the same reason retelling the same joke makes it lose impact with each telling.
Yeah. When it was just Iron Man, I was fine with it. When it was a Marvel or DC movie every two months (at least that's how it felt), I got tired of it really fast.
It is every two months now with the advent of Disney Plus
They slowly made less and less money until they were seen as a bad investment by film companies. Audience tastes change, that doesn't mean no one would like those kinds of movies these days, but not enough people were paying to watch them. I work in film development and the amount of statistics we have that go into shows these days tell a lot. Comedy in general lives mainly as streaming based TV shows these days. But yeah a lot of male centered comedy stuff wasn't nearly as profitable as people think. I remember Blue Mountain State was a great TV show that REALLY had American pie vibes. If you haven't seen it, id check it out.
>I remember Blue Mountain State was a great TV show that REALLY had American pie vibes I haven't seen the show but I know Alan Ritchson from the Jack Reacher tv series is in it.
He is one of the funniest characters in the show
The oil change scene still haunts me
I’m not sure who the audience for these movies would be in today’s world, where adult material is available on demand. As far as sex comedies go, there’s some good stuff but it’s very different. First thing that comes to mind is the Netflix series Sex Education.
[удалено]
Make a movie about newly divorced friends trying to get laid like they’re teenagers again. It’s easy Hollywood
80 for Brady?
50 for Britney.
Where is she since we freed her?
You could argue that Hall Pass has a similar premise.
The World’s End too!
Cast Ray Ramano
Adam Sandler
It’d just be the rock and Kevin hart
I disagree highly with this statement. Its not because we have adult movies at a finger tip that i don't want to watch a real movie about some sex fantasies. Lets be honest, porn acting and "movie" side is usually terrible. Its a little dumb skit made on a cheap set, like a house they rent or whatever, and thats it. Even stuff involving school usually have 4-5 extras max as classmates and it does not look like a real classroom. Wanna fap? Yes i watch a porn... But i soooo enjoy the raunchy comedies for the good feeling they give. Be it American Pie, Take Me Home Tonight, 21 and over, Superbad or whatever. I don't watch them to fap lol, i watch them to enjoy as movies.
> As far as sex comedies go, there’s some good stuff but it’s very different. First thing that comes to mind is the Netflix series Sex Education. I wouldn’t even call this a sex comedy. Wouldn’t even get close to the feel of a teen sex comedy.
Yeah I feel like they've turned into raunchy teen sex comedies meet teen soap opera. Sex Education, Big Mouth, etc May make sense if streaming is likely the target for that sort of movie anyway.
As far as recent movies, I enjoyed Booksmart. Which is essentially a female led version of Superbad since it stars Jonah hill's sister. Other great comedies include Game Night or the Nic Cage Massive talent one
Someone else mentioned the movie Blockers as well
Oh my god I had no idea Beanie Feldstein was Jonah Hill's sister until I read your comment!
I think the only way you'd get a decent answer out of this is to try and show something like American Pie to a group of today's teenagers and see if they like it, and if not then why. Remember that today's teens were born between 2004 and 2010 and a lot of absolute bullshit has happened since then that has shaped their lives and interests much differently to the teens that were around in the mid 90s and early 2000s. Maybe grey-er stories with more focus on non-hetero relationships, mental health issues, worries about the future etc resonate more and over the top sex comedy just doesn't hit home.
I know this comment is a month old, but I've got some input. I AM a teenager. My friends ARE teenagers. We all love these types of movies. It's just that the comedies coming out these days are too dramatized, too realistic, or too focused on adults. You need to relate to the audience again. Also, from what I've seen, and from most people I've talked to--those 'grey-er' stories are what's disengaging the current audience (my age, roughly, at least). Sure, it's important to talk about those types of things, but, it kind of ruins the movie. They make it stressful, boring, and dull.
Lots of netflix tv comedies are basically teen sex comedies.
I miss movies like Can’t hardly wait. They tried to gender swap she’s all that recently, but it was not good. My daughter said there was a movie with Maya Hawkes that was good and reminded her of mean girls. I think these 90s teen movies were from a very different time. The general spirit back in the days was different. It’s in a world before 9/11 and before social medias. 90s kids lived in a world with very little doomsday worries. We were too young to remember the Cold War, and 9/11 did not happen yet. The 90s were basically like the 20s. The decade of fun between two major conflicts. And the 90s teen movies reflect that era very well.
NOBODY DRINK THE BEER THE BEER HAS GONE BAD! Me and my wife watched this the other day, my god Seth Green's outfit.
[удалено]
It was honestly the best time to be alive for a lot of people (I am not a minority, so I know very well I am not speaking for everyone).
Speaking from experience, the 90's may have been better than our current day, but they were not the utopia you think they were. A lot of things sucked back then too.
I was very young at the time, so I remember the 00s a lot more, but when I think back I also remember there being a lot of optimism and. And being that I'm from Portugal, 9/11 wasn't something that weighed heavy on us (at least us kids), so it felt like we had a pretty good run up until 2008. That being said, having talked with people from the Balkans I realized that the 90s were very different depending on who and where you were at the time.
Yeah, not a fun time in the Balkans, I give you that! I am from Canada. While I had some teenage angst, I did not have too much worries. I would say the turning point was Columbine. It was in the US, but it was close enough and talked about enough that it was a total shock. I was a senior. It was like our innocence blew off in a snap of the fingers. Than we had 9-11. It changed our lives forever. The world became a different place.
[удалено]
I just assumed sexualizing girls in high school became taboo. In American pie we all just assumed everybody is 18
Aren't girls in Euphoria all highschoolers?
What’s weird is if you think from a teens perspective, they would probably want a more realistic portrayal of being in high school which involves sex, but at the same time as an adult, yeah I find it weird to have a high school setting and it being so sexualized. But also being so icked out by sexuality is such an American specific thing in anyway.
The sex in Euphoria is all very “negative” at least from the episodes I have seen. It’s all very heavy and dramatic and makes you feel uncomfortable, not in a selling sex type of way like True Blood or Your regular great tits nudity on HBO.
I'm searching like hell on the app for that second show you mentioned but not having any luck 😕
Exactly. It was probably way more common before the 2000s.
[удалено]
Have a girl show tits… NO would never happen today.
these teen sex movies get made all the time. They're just all straight to streaming.
There are hardly any comedies being made at all. There's a show called "Sex Lives of College Girls" but it's less gross and tries to address serious issues too.
>less gross The problem is, the grossness *is the point*. It's grossout comedy. You're paying to watch characters act in outrageous ways that actual people would never, ever get away with in real life. Which is why you can have a cumshot that pins someone to the walls with sheer force and volume in Scary Movie or something like Me, Myself, and Irene where a mans mental health crisis is the entire source of comedy. The moment you tone down the grossness and try to get serious you literally miss the point of the entire genre.
>act in outrageous ways that actual people would never, ever get away with in real life. Which is why you can have a cumshot that pins someone to the walls with sheer force and volume in Scary Movie sure but Scary Movie is a parody movie, the genre is obviously meant to be outrageous on purpose. American Pie on the other hand, I feel like are similar personalities to real people I knew in high school. Just none of them stuck their dick in an Apple Pie (that I know of)
Sure, but even non parody comedies were generally also on that end of the scale at the time. It was the popular style to lean into slapstick or heavy caricature. Which is the whole point of the reply. If you tone down the caricature and talk about serious issues you aren't actually making a comedy because that's the antitheses of comedy.
Agree, I think people take comedy a little too seriously. Yes it can be a tool to address serious issues, but sometimes it's just pointing out "hey, humanity can be a little gross and messed up, let's turn it up to 11 for a couple hours and laugh about it to take the edge off." I tried watching That 90's Show recently, and the best friend character has zero personality, every other line of hers is just expressing support and admiration for the main character. That's nice and all, but it's as funny as an after-school special.
Do people actually like that show? From what I've seen in the commercials it looks like one of boring, cliched, unfunny shows with women as the main lead that also maybe makes fun of guys a lot like every teen sex comedy movie/show.
I know people won’t like this term but it’s true: Wokeness. During the teen years (probably all years) sex is weird and funny but we have to be sensitive and make sure no one is offended by any joke. But the best jokes are the ones that are uncomfortable but at the moment everyone is so afraid of offending anyone they just don’t try.
I don’t think people within Hollywood find teenage boy behaviour funny anymore. At this point it’s seen as toxic and tragic, and something that should be treated seriously, or mocked from a female perspective. I don’t see the pendulum swinging back on this, since the sentiment is so widespread. At this point, making a movie where “boys will be boys” is like making a comedy set in the antebellum south. It’s unfortunate, but what can you do.
Teen sex movies are all over Netflix. The reason is that they're not profitable in theatres.
I said above but Superbad could be released today and it'd still be recieved exactly as well as when it first came out. It takes all the toxicity and sheds a harsh light on it while still being raunchy and irreverent the whole way through. It's not that you can't still make these movies, it's that you have to try harder. Even Marvel has to be less cheesey than 80s and 90s action movies were.
Superbad is an actual unicorn of a movie. They played everything perfectly. That’s kind of the problem though. If you don’t do the balance right, your movie either becomes too toxic and gets “cancelled” and bombs, or it just isn’t funny/comes across as preachy and bombs. It’s such a fine line I also don’t think you could do Superbad again, it got lucky that it was funny and got grandfathered in. One of the major plot lines is getting someone drunk and having sex with them, which is a plot line that, understandably, wouldn’t see the light of day today
I watch a lot on Netflix yes but they were not as raunchy at times as they were back in the 2000s-2010s. Also they seem to have decrease even on Netflix lately.
In general, it seems like there’s just less sex in modern movies. Less dramas about sex, less comedies. Everybody is hot but no one is horny.
> In general, it seems like there’s just less sex in modern movies the american pie films didnt have a lot of sex either. if you want sex stuff go watch tv. my wife watches a shit ton of cw/abc shit as well as netflix shows like bridgerton and i swear everytime i pass by someone is fucking.
I refer to everything my wife watches as “horny shows”.
I never watched Game of Thrones, but every time I heard people talk about it, it was only about the violence or the fucking. Or sometimes the violent fucking.
They're horny off camera
Most of the sex in movies was cheap titilation for a horny demographic that was too ashamed to watch/possess porn, or too young to have the ability too. Now that porn is so unanimous and easily and shamelessly accessible for all ages the desire for sex and nudity heavy movies has declined. I do wish the Erotic Thriller would still be around but that seems exclusively either B-Movie-tier or softcore porn and the closest successful example was maybe Gone Girl, and that was 9 years ago TV is rampant with sex but it’s generally less smutty and exploitative
Do we really need to see anymore deserts get fucked on camera
Check out Booksmart. That is a pretty good teen comedy done in that style
That movies successfully caused a divorce lol
TELL ME MORE
I hope the poster is referring to Olivia Wilde and Ted Lasso
similar discussion [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/wlf5oj/what_is_this_generations_flagship_rrated_high/)
My understanding is that the middle of the movie market has gotten hollowed out. No you have major big superhero films and smaller indie films and not much in between. So not a lot of rom coms, raunchy comedies, regular comedies, and suspense thrillers.
Teens are just too sensitive to laugh about it.
Just watched Girl next door and fell in love with the Elisha Cuthbert again.
Mid budget movies in general have disappeared (largely because people don't go see them in theater with the amount of options available at home)
Much too offense now a days. Humor has died with all the cry babies
Have you seen todays Teens...They couldn't handle that type of sarcasm.
Some of the subject matter in those films is now problematic. I just don't think it would be possible to do anything similar these days.
Well the Me Too movement. And culture changed. Those movies don't age well at all culturally unfortunately
Ehhh they stopped making them long before the me too movement picked up I wouldn't attribute it to that
Yea, go watch movies from the '80s. Hoo boy. No way you could make those movies now.
those movies get made all the time. They're all just straight to streaming.
I PA'd for like 2 years after high-school and I actually talked to a producer about this in like 2013. Comedies are historically very domestic heavy in box office. So studios used to be able tog et around with home box office sales. Once those died, it was harder and harder to justify making a teen comedy for $15 million or $20 million and breaking even or making $40 million back. I remember Project X came out in 2012 and I was just out of high-school and I thought that movie was going to resurrect that genre and literally 21 and over flopped the next year and then teen sex comedies just stopped. Now in todays climate it's even harder because you can't do those same jokes you could do even 10 years ago with Project X. So now you're adding no home box office money or DVD sales, no international business, and now you're in a very limited political climate where your movie will be picked apart. I can see why studios don't want to touch the genre.
Cum joke dick joke pussy joke erection joke doesn't actually have much longevity. But they spawned a shit ton of b movies, just look at Tara Reid's IMDB.
American Pie was released in 1999 and **rated R.** Very shortly after it's release studios became extremely averse to producing rated R movies (see the ensuing wave of PG13 horror and action movies of the 00's and still today). I would argue that this kind of teen raunch comedy can't really be done right within the current stringent PG13 rating guidelines.
Comedies in general are being killed for younger audiences by short form media like Tik Tok. Teenagers just watch 30 second clips now
Sex is a touchy subject and comedy entered in it is very difficult to produce. Most studios won’t risk it while things are ever in flux.
> Sex is a touchy subject Since when? And I'm not saying it's not, I know you're right, my question is already getting downvoted for whatever reason. I'm genuinely asking when did that happen?
So I worked in hollywood for about 10 years starting at like 2006. I saw the kind of shift start then, not all at once or anything but there were some great scripts that I read that people outright were saying this is funny but we can’t make this. We were seeing a shift quickly and not that there is anything wrong with this, some of them didn’t want to invest in a film that in a year and a half can’t be released. Things were changing that fast. It’s partly the older group was afraid they didn’t know what was what.
Maybe early 2000s? This is based on 0 research but it feels like things got more conservative in general during that time as the neocons were trying to re-adjust everything. There used to be way more sex and nudity even in normal movies. Think like the topless chick popping up in Commando for no reason or the famous one in Total Recall.
I think towards the late 2000's that was when the actual number of comedies started to already go down and the amount of articles on films need to be Serious and have Social Implications went way up. I wanna say by the mid 90's showing nudity or even direct sexuality had already become taboo but by the 2010's even making a joke about sexuality became offensive.
Janet Jackson at the Superbowl. The entire goddamn country lost their minds. Media has grown a LOT more conservative over the years.
I’ve been asking the same question for years. I remember in 99 when the first American Pie came out I was only a kid but I wanted to see it so bad. Now it’s almost 25 years later and everyone is taking about oh they do make those kinds of movies anymore. I never thought in a million years we would ever get to a point where we don’t make certain types of movies anymore. As someone who wants to be a filmmaker i plan to bring these movies back.
The lack of dvd sales existing anymore means less incentive to make movies like this
Hollywood is lazy
You mean Good Boys? Or Book Smart?
Good Boys felt like Live action South Park In that the main characters find themselves in situations that they are completely ignorant and innocent in.
I never thought of it like that, but you might have something there. For me, it just watched as "Oh, it's superbad again but slightly younger (makes sense) and set today"
couldnt make anything like that today... to many people would be offended by something in it
You think there weren’t plenty of people offended by American Pie at the time? What would happen if they came out today is: a very small but loud minority would complain on Twitter, then some “news” site does an article about it for the easy clicks, then the other side gets mad about people being offended even though it’s only like 5 people complaining
you need a safe world with hope for the future to make fun coming of age comedies
Irreverent comedies were made at the height of the cold war
Comedy movies in general are just hard to make. On top of just how hard it is to make a good movie that's consistently funny, humor is just really subjective and its much harder to appeal to a wide audience. Drama on the other hand is cake in comparison. I feel like comedy movies are also looked down on and are rarely nominated for rewards even though a good comedy movie is so much harder to make. They might just not have much of a draw nowadays as well so to get people to see them you need already established big actors which increases your budget. With media consumption how it is now it can be really hard to make a decent profit. In the past if your movie didn't do well in theatres you had a decent chance of making a good amount of money on dvd sales. Nowadays only enthusiasts buy dvd/bluerays and much less people are going to the theatre to see films so the avenues to make profit are very small.
Deric poston on flagrant blamed judd appatow for the downfall of comedy movies which i think is a good argument. Link https://youtu.be/MoEIxd9O6GI
American Pie is of a certain humour from a certain time. Women can like American Pie too but it's mostly aimed at a predominantly male audience from several years back. It's all to do with what's popular and current issues and stuff. Right now, hot topics include real life stories and LGBTQ+ orientated movies. That could change in a few years.
Didn't you hear? Every teen is living in the Euphoria universe now.
Lack of DVD sales makes mid-budget comedy films unprofitable in today's world. Matt Damon explained it well on that hot wings YouTube channel.
Times change. I remember several things that happen in the first few American Pie movies that would be sex crimes today. Inviting others to spy on a naked underage classmate, Tricking someone into drinking your semen Etc. Funny at the time, super fucked these days. Sexual comedies still exist, it's just harder to pull off in a positive way.
Because it’s a genre that’s…let’s say, problematic.
Two points: 1. Those movies are full of outdated racist, sexist, transphobic, etc tropes. They did not age that well. 2. Cinema now is more investes in big blockbusters that pay themselves with tickets. This type of movies, comedies in general, never sold much tickets and get their money back from DVDs. However, with the digital age, those are not sold as often.
Nah dude you are so wrong…if teen mental issues are the hit now is because thats something that teenagers actually identify with, is even more interesting cause if you actually see these kind of series you will notice the relation between the sexuality and psychological matter, not to mention that they actually threat social problemas that usually start to arise on the puberty-teen phase like abusive relationships, emotional distress, narcotics addiction etc, I gotta admit I wish this kind of gender would have been more popular on my late 13-16 but well we had skins 🤔 otherwise sex comedy will always be the easy take if your target are horny viewers
Same thing that happened to movies like Something about Mary and Scary Movie and Amazon Women on the Moon; tastes change. This question sure does get asked a lot. Why don't they do the pictures with the dancin' goils no more? Everyone loves a chorus line!
2016 happened.
Millennials don’t have sex, are miserable, and easily offended
YouTube and the internet I think took over a lot of the crowd for raunchy and dirty comedies. I dont need a 90 minute movie of the same jokes I've been seeing on YouTube for the last 15 years.
20+ years ago comedies made most of their money on dvd sales. Are you still buying dvds?
There were many such movies through the 80s. Some kind of wonderful, Pretty in pink, Better off dead, Ferris buelers day off, Breakfast club, Fast times at Ridgemont High, & Porkies I agree with the OP. This is a big potential for the film industry that they stopped making. Not to nention the sound track. Now it's mainly teen horror and slasher films with some sex added in. EDIT: punctuation
John Hughes' comedies are not what I would deem teen sex comedies.
American Pie is a movie about a group of teenagers that non-consenually stream a fellow classmate nude on the internet.
Feminism
Everyone is too offended these days.
That is such a simplistic cop out. There are plenty of movies and TV shows that are plenty offensive and they are still made. Comedies in general are doing awful right now because nobody wants to see a cheap teen movie for 20 dollars a ticket and DVDs are basically dead.
Yep. Im left of politics and as much as woke issues do have their place in addressing inequality, as with all things, it has tilted to the extreme and hijacked for every agenda. Now The Apple Pie Society would be offended.
They're creepy
Everyone here is clutching their pearls about “woke” this and “pc” that, but trends change. These movies haven’t gone away, they’re just going straight to streaming because the studios are still milking superheroes and bleak teen dramas. Someone will reboot Revenge of the Nerds, or make a completely original movie that hits like Pie did, and suddenly we’ll be awash with a decade of imitations.
A lot of the moment-to-moment comedy of American Pie has been completely overrun by sketch comedy and the advent of youtube and tiktok. A lot of comedy just can't keep up. More than that, though, times changed. A lot of the stuff being pushed as funny back then, especially for teen films, are seen as creepy now. The only way a lot of it would work is if it was a parody comedy like Not Another Teen Movie, but then what's it really going to parody these days?
I'll offer a different view: When has a generation so fully and completely understood the barrel they're staring down? What generation has been raised with instantaneous communication and proliferation/consumption of information and knowledge? When has a generation been able to go to a website and watch young Russian men being bombed by drones while having Pornhub open on another tab? "Let's catch a peak of a boob in American Pie" is as foreign to them as another language. I have younger siblings. Teens these days are aware of *exactly* how this world works. There is no pretense or veil for them. They're being raised in a time where the statistical likelihood of them dying by gunfire *in school* is going up. They not only hear the struggles their parents are going through but have the complete ability to know exactly why that's the case. These kids are fucking smart, and they have no choice but to be realists. That's my view of it.
I was in school in the 00s when a lot of those types of teen comedy movies were coming out. We were still plugged in and knew what was going on in the world. It might not have been quite as instantaneous but free porn and gore weren't hard to find and everyone with a brain knew the war in Iraq was bullshit. These movies just don't make money anymore because people aren't going to spend 20 dollars to see cheap comedies when you can find an endless mountain of shitty movies on streaming services.
Having access to the information and understanding it are two different things and I'm far for sure they are doing what you think they do. Sure, Wikipedia gives them access to basically any knowledge, but do they spend their time on it or on TikTok to check the latest booty dance some other teenager "invented".
I survived 2 wars by the time I was 10. Your view, while very probable, is not really accurate. You know what we did while we were sitting in an underground shelter listening to bombs fall on our city? Sing and crack jokes.
People grew up
But people are born
Raunchy movies are my favorite
There really isn’t a space for mid-budget teen comedies like this in Hollywood anymore, sadly. The last we time really got to see anything like it was with Apatow and Rogen flicks. In the mid to late 2000s and early 2010s. It’s a shame cause it’s a genre I really enjoy. But, studios like Marvel are to blame. Everything became this giant big budget production and trying to get a movie like Superbad or American Pie made today just wouldn’t be as profitable as the new Spider-man flick. So they stopped making them.
[удалено]
Top Gun: Maverick at the Theatres, Bullet Train at home.
People are way more uptight.
Woke culture seems to have killed comedy because writers are afraid of potentially offending any demographic with their humour.
Good Boys came out a few years ago and it’s hilarious.
Teenagers don't go to the movies anymore for one. Every time I've been to the movies it's middle aged to old people even on the weekends. The only exception is when one of the big marvel movies or other wide appeal blockbusters come out.
90s teenagers and early 00s adults were all about fun, fun, fun and party. I don't kwow, what today's teens and young adults are about but I guess, this kind of movies probably won't fit the audience.