To be clear, the teen movie wasn’t invented with American Pie but it was surely revived by it. Along with sophomoric hijinks, the 1999 sex comedy created a revised blueprint that came with deeper, more realized pathos, pop-punk soundtracks, and much stronger scripts compared to the height of the sub-genre experienced in the 1980s. It parlayed the milieu and tone of Can’t Hardly Wait with R-rated intentions.

A lot of movies cut themselves from the mold left by American Pie but few were able to equal the crass of the teen romp like 2000’s Road Trip, focusing more on the camaraderie and less on the lewd antics, for better or worse. Instantiating Aaron Sorkin’s tenets about intentions and obstacles, the plot gets set into motion by a very plausible yet specific event. College student Josh Parker (Breckin Meyer) hasn’t heard from his long-time girlfriend in a while. She goes to school across the country in Texas and he assumes that she’s giving him the slip.

Urged by his group of friends (played by an ensemble that includes Seann William Scot, Paulo Costanzo, and Tom Green), Josh ends up having sex with his classmate Beth (Amy Smart). They film the tryst and the videotape accidentally gets mailed to Josh’s girlfriend. Now, he and his friends are racing against the U.S. Postal Service to get to Texas before the package arrives.

More Porky’s than Van Wilder, Road Trip is one of only a couple of examples that are actually ballsier than American Pie while still retaining a sense of heart. Todd Phillips, we can clearly see now, knows something about blending those two elements, albeit with mixed results. Something like his awards darling Joker gave us the most sympathy we’ll ever garner for Batman’s most vile nemesis (while hardly ever reminding us that it was an IP stripped right from the comic books), and his genre-defining breakout The Hangover showed that R-rated comedies didn’t necessarily need to have star power to rake in box office profits.*

In hindsight, it makes sense that Phillips was more than willing to not only be risky but also have the creativity to think of scenarios that warranted such risks. And not every joke is about sex either, such as the scene where Andy Dick is watching TV and imitating Bob Ross with colored ballpoint pens. There’s a crucial plot point about the guys stealing a bus from a school for the blind, while Tom Green’s entire schtick hinges on his absurdist persona. Most of the bits are done without shock value, as though the filmmaker refused to use ideas unless they at least have the potential for a laugh from the audience. However, there’s a sequence in a sperm bank that we probably could’ve done without.

Road Trip is unique in that it falls into both the college and road trip sub-genres simultaneously, spending surprisingly equal time in both settings. Tom Green’s character provides us with the framing device as he relays the story about Josh to a group of visitors on a campus tour that he’s giving. Likewise, if the actors didn’t look so much older than their characters, the roles being represented would have nailed these relatable college archetypes (e.g., the sad guy in a long-distance relationship, the naturally brilliant underachiever, the social butterfly, the introvert with a car).

Perhaps inadvertently, Road Trip uses the literal distance between home and afar to represent comfort and unfamiliarity, with growth as the reward at the end. But to say the road trip itself actually led to some sort of coming-of-age development for our protagonist would be a stretch. It mostly represents the lengths to which we go to preserve something that feels safe in favor of something new and, thus, scary. College in general is a scary endeavor. But there are still people who choose to stay in their hometowns while their friends and lovers voyage to other area codes.

Written by Phillips and Scot Armstrong, it won’t be as tight of a screenplay as some of its contemporaries but Road Trip has one of the best collections of gags amongst pre-Apatow comedy offerings. Showing the value in ideas over antics, this 2000 cult classic was a prototype in its own right.

Twizard Rating: 85

*At the time of its release in 2009, The Hangover was the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever at the time, beaten only by its sequel. Meanwhile, Joker is still the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever released.