When a particularly exuberant bout of self-relief causes your grandmother to prematurely pop her clogs you know you’re in American Pie territory.

Unlike most guys, high school student Erik isn’t looking forward to leaving school. He may be the first member of his family to graduate as a virgin, and with the family name being Stifler it’s something he’s finding difficult to live 'up' to.

An ill-fated attempt to have sex with girlfriend Tracey botches up spectacularly. Taking it as a sign that she’s not ready, Tracey decides to give Erik a "guilt-free weekend pass".

The plan is, if Erik can have sex with someone else, it’ll allow the couple to get over this particular hump in their relationship.

So when cousin Dwight Stifler invites Eric and his mates to celebrate the end of term by participating in "the Naked Mile", it’s a chance for wild partying, drunken debauchery, and for Eric the one-time opportunity to be a crowned a Stifler once and for all.

Will he uphold the stiff family tradition, though?

With lashings of bare flesh on show, alcoholic consumption by the barrel, and the now familiar scene involving human waste, there’s more chance of Nuts magazine breaking new ground by not having a single breast on the front cover than for the franchise to deviate from its tried-and-tested formula of boobs, bongs and barfing.

Of course, it's shamelessly contrived and there's little doubt which course of action our hero will take, though the non-stop mudbath of rampant sex and binge-drinking is somewhat at odds with the moralistic, er, climax.

Adolescents and lovers of teen comedies will lap it up. But the Pies are definitely turning stale.

Jack Tsang