Slackers

American Pie has a lot to answer for. A few years ago the fashion was for teen slasher flicks. Now it's teen sex comedies.

The gags are gratuitous and the sex is lame.

Dave (Devon Sawa), Sam (Jason Segal) and Jeff (Michael C Maronna) are experienced scammers. They cheat exams, they lie, they steal. They use every method known to the criminal fraternity, excluding murder, to get what they want. Being a student means no work, all play.

This concept has genuine possibilities, but writer David Steinberg and director Dewey Nicks have retarded tastes. They think masturbation is funny and washing down an old lady's chest with an outsized sponge even funnier. The joker in the pack is a Jason Biggs lookalike, called Ethan (Jason Schwartzman), who is stupid, accident prone and mentally deranged. His problem is that girls don't like him. No one does.

He tells Dave, Sam and Jeff that if they don't help him become close and personal with the lovely Angela (Jaime King), he'll expose them as cheaters. The trio get to work, infiltrating her personal life, hacking into her computer, chatting up her relatives. The trouble is Dave falls for her and she for him.

You have heard enough. None of these characters has a redeeming feature. "You treat a hot girl like dirt," Sam says. "And she'll stick to you like mud." If that's a stinky thing to say, it sums up their attitude. They are cads, without being interesting.

Dave is dull. Sam is arrogant. Jeff is goofy. Angela has the looks of Michelle Pfeiffer, sans personality. Ethan is poison.

Campus comedy has reached a level beneath which sewage floats.