What makes it different from others?

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The Last American Virgin has been gaining ground in terms of cult-status since it's relatively unknown release. The film is a sex-romp at heart, but also happens to be the most hard-hitting sex-romp of all-time.The acting and the production values are passable, but this film transports the viewer to the era, and arguably provides the best soundtrack of all-time - not just in terms of selections, but in terms of placement.I took my wife to see "Take Me Home Tonight". I saw the trailer and thought, "That's right up my alley". I'll never live that one down. I've been letting her pick the movies for half a decade because of the miscall. How that film is ranked 6.3, and this is ranked 6.2, is totally beyond me. TLAV isn't perfect. The acting is hit or miss, and it's more entertaining than hilarious.Where the film goes from merely decent, harmless sex-romp fare, to hard- hitting drama/love story, is where the film goes from good but forgettable, to cult/memorable. I often look back at a films' impact, emotionally, and weigh that very heavily in terms of scoring on IMDb. This film will divide audiences. It goes from completely light-hearted, to completely serious, and the ending won't endear itself to every viewer. Personally, I think it's brilliant. Realistic as realistic gets, and it makes everything that comes before it more realistic too.There's something about the ending that is even deeper than it appears. Maybe Gary is better off.. Gary deserves better.. Gary makes it.. These are all thoughts that were going through my mind as the credits rolled the first time I watched it. Someone told me it stole the subplot from Fast Times, but I had to correct them as TLAV came out a couple weeks BEFORE Fast Times. It also tackles that subject instead just touching it.No sex-romp will make you feel more emotions than "The Last American Virgin". It's rightfully earned it's new cult status. I highly recommend this film.For what it's worth. TMHT 4.4 TLAV 7.4 jmo

Early on in The Last American Virgin there are some clever instances of the film tapping into its kind of teenage humour. Gary, Rick and David have invited three girls back to Gary's house in an attempt to score. Naturally, Gary, the film's protagonist and the only virgin of the three, is stuck with the most frigid of the girls. But she is a teenager too, and so the shirt comes off, in the midst of her half-heartedly attempts to deflect him with a bowl of cold popcorn. Gary quickly goes for the bra, which to the teenage boy is like the last barrier to the holy grail, but its a clunky, unsexy contraption (form matching its owner). Their end position that his parents stumble onto is something of a masochist's fantasy; Gary, in his enthusiasm to unsnap the bra, has her in a makeshift choke-hold while she fidgets and shifts around in her seat. Before that the boys nervously offer the girls high-grade 'cocaine' in an attempt to impress them, without revealing it is merely powdered artificial sweetener. Davidson reaches for the natural humour that is squeezed out of the self- consciousness of the scene; the boys are trying to play it off like hotshots, and the girls pretend like they know what they are doing and have done it all before. It's sweet because neither side is willing to admit just how inexperienced they really are. We all know how the scene ends, of course. The film is from a period of teen sex comedies that advertise raunchiness for raunchiness' sake, so the outcome must be having everyone rush into the room at the same time half naked to the shock, horror and heart attack of the prudish mother. If there is any other dimension of these characters, it is not even slightly explored. Davidson sets up the film to subvert via its ending, by having Gary's hopes crash down and mar what the conventional audience expects. But nobody learns anything from this ending. It's been praised widely for its 'realism', but it just beats the poor idiot relentlessly with the close-up of his teary face. Every facet of the film is constructed to serve Gary's misery, but Davidson has missed the step where he acknowledges exactly where it was he went wrong and how he will move forward. Without this, it's so easy for a viewer to veer in the wrong direction after those credits. It is supposedly built on the destruction of what would later be dubbed the 'friendzone'. We see this in Gary, in the way he swoops in as the nice guy after Rick, and how he is suddenly donning leather jackets and brimming with confidence once he has found his girlfriend. The crux of it is that this is all based on his initial attraction to Karen, and his desire to have sex with her, which makes his crusade hardly more noble that Rick's. But this message isn't earned because the women in the film are all terrible caricatures. Of course Gary is stuck with the dumpy third girl, and then coveted by Karen's heavily bespectacled friend Rose. Karen herself is this fuzzy, vague bundle of characterisations brought in to service the plot. See Davidson's treatment of her abortion, as some sinister, defiling procedure, urgently cross-cutting between the two as if they share a special bond because he helps her get through the ordeal. And then a day later she is back to being the bouncing, smiling Diane Franklin. The whole plot falls apart because she isn't a character that forces Gary's hand, but merely a device to rip out his heart. Davidson relies so heavily on the shocking treatment of Gary's ending that he forgets to separate these characters from the wild, irrational sphere of the teenage period where anything goes and rational thought is succeeded by passion and desire. This conclusion would work better if these characters had the agency that they deserve, and instead of the soppy, sugary kiss in the bathroom, Gary heads to the party with the expectation and anticipation of that kiss. Then the blow is valid, and his demise is a piercing and justifiable critique of his mindset. But there is none of that, and there is no moment of post-realisation ala 500 Days of Summer that enables growth. So all in all, it's barely an upgrade from the formulaic happy ending, which makes a lot more sense from Karen's perspective anyway.

This is not an easy film to review. On the one hand, The Last American Virgin is an obvious cash grab. It's a teen comedy with plenty of female nudity, something that was seemingly popular with audiences back in the early-1980s. This not only speaks about the ongoing degeneration of Western culture but also about what people generally enjoy watching now - mainly nudity, horror and fantasy. So, The Last American Virgin sort of follows the Porky's (1981) formula, but with considerably less style and imagination. I'm thinking that the title too was chosen simply to attract male viewers. And don't forget about those jeans with an open zipper on the film's poster. On the other hand, the two leading actors, Lawrence Monoson and Diane Franklin, deliver good performances, especially in scenes dealing with love and heartbreak. The coming-of-age drama featuring their characters is like a different film within this film. The cast is made up mostly of Jewish-American actors, and director Boaz Davidson is from Israel. The Last American Virgin is a remake of Davidson's 1978 film Lemon Popsicle. Davidson teamed up with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Cannon Films to get The Last American Virgin made and released in the USA. By the way, Cannon Films is best known for releasing several cheesy patriotic action flicks starring Chuck Norris in the 1980s. And so, if you're an adult like me (I'm a young adult) and you get to watch The Last American Virgin, you'll notice that something isn't quite right with this film. And I'm not talking about the not-so-good direction by Davidson. I'm talking about the behavior of the characters and the situations they get into. These characters just don't behave like American teens. This is made clear by the fact that Davidson also wrote the screenplay. What might have looked familiar to an Israeli audience, looks odd to me (I'm Canadian by the way). And I kept thinking that the behavior of these supposedly American teens is intense or strange. It's no wonder that film critic Geoff Andrews called this film "sickening junk." But when this film isn't showing us a group of young men desperately trying to get into the pants of young women or a prostitute, it's showing us one of those young men longing for a beautiful transfer student. How about that? Also, I couldn't believe it when I saw Diane Franklin. I kept thinking that she is too good-looking to be in this film. She has little to say, but her performance is clearly one of the best. When talking about The Last American Virgin, people often mention the soundtrack. The decision to include popular new wave rock songs from that time period was clearly made to appeal to an American teen audience. But these songs aren't used to good effect in the film. Some of them don't even fit the scene. So, given all this, is The Last American Virgin worth recommending? In my opinion, it's not worth recommending. I'd say that it's one of the worst teen movies of the 1980s. It's entertaining, but that's one of the few good things that I can say about it. It's not worth watching even if you're interested in American '80s culture because only the setting and the actors are American.

I remember first seeing the film 20 years ago in the Summer of 1991, a month before I entered High School for the first time. I knew this would be a film with lots of tits and ass, and the first half of the movie, it was just that. A typical teenage comedy with three best pals trying desperately to get laid (Which all but one of them succeeded, the film's main character, Gary) The scenes with two of the guys having sex with the latina woman, with Gary not getting his opportunity as her lover comes home sooner than expected, was funny. The scene where they all catch crabs from a prostitute is hilarious and classic. But that was just the first half of the film. However, the storyline in the second half of the film, changes, and goes from very funny to very dark.In the second part of the movie, Gary falls for pretty popular girl, Karen, who has eyes for Gary's best pal, Rick. Rick is a popular, charismatic jock who happens to have a way with the ladies, while Gary is just a typical, shy, gawky teen. Rick and Karen become a couple, and after having sex, Karen becomes pregnant with Rick's child. Rick dumps her, and Gary comes to her defense. This love triangle puts a huge strain between the best friends, eventually ending the friendship.While Rick starts dating another girl, and heads off on a ski trip with her and several friends, Gary pawns off most of his things, borrows money from his boss at the Pizza Parlor where he works, and comes up with the money needed for Karen to have an abortion. Gary and Karen spend the weekend at his grandmother's house while she is out of town, helping her to recuperate. While there, Gary finally professes his love to Karen, who seems to share the the attraction as the two share a passionate kiss together, and she invites him to her birthday party. Gary uses the cash he has left to buy Karen a locket as a birthday present. However, at the party, Gary receives a huge surprise as Karen and Rick reconcile, and he catches the two making out. Crushed, Gary abruptly leaves her party, and drives home in tears, as the credits play to a song by James Ingram.I have to admit, although the ending was sad, it was real. How many of us had that popular girl in high school we all coveted, only to have our hearts broken? I've been there. Towards the end, it looked like that, as many viewers expected and wanted, myself included, that Gary would finally win the affections of his dream girl. But the way the movie ended, the makers of the film were very effective at fooling the audience when Karen tragically breaks Gary's heart at the end.Of course, most, if not all, thought of Gary as the hero of the film, with Rick being the villain, and Karen as the damsel in distress whom the hero comes to her rescue. But in that scene where Gary catches Rick and Karen making out and are caught, Rick, although happy to get Karen back, has a look of regret on his face, as he knows his former best friend also loved her. A look of "Hey man, I know you love her, but I also love her." Rick is also just a typical high school jock that panicked when he made a mistake that he knew would change his life forever.Karen, however, had a smirk on her face, as she never intended to be with Gary, but was using him. She knew how Gary felt about her, and when he offered to help her, she was only too happy to take advantage of the situation. That moment, she, in my eyes, goes from being the damsel in distress to the real villain in the film.Although the film provided lots of T and A and a lot of laughs as advertised, the film also provided a look at what many people in high school goes through. And the ending, although sad, was very real. The Last American Virgin is a film that is a classic, and deserving of being called just that. Besides it being a typical Tits and Ass comedy, it is also a film that really makes you think. It is a film that is so real, containing situations that many in high school can relate to. It is a film I highly recommend seeing if you have not done so.