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Considerably classier than American Pie: Beta House is the latest Dane Cook comedy, Good Luck Chuck; of course, that’s like comparing some really effective, high-tech agricultural manure to plain ol’ pig droppings. Although wrapped in a far more talented cast, Good Luck Chuck is unfortunately wallowing in the same pigpen of blue, low-brow humor as Beta House.

At least the cast lifts the dreck-filled, male fantasy script to a somewhat watchable level. Of course, get out your pens and write this down: if you’re going to make a sleezy sex comedy, at least cast the talented and attractive Jessica Alba in a starring role. Alba, who started her career with the respected Fox series Dark Angel and has since burned up the silver screen in mass-appeal movies like Fantastic Four and critically acclaimed movies like Sin City, must have decided to slum it a bit this time around.

Caught in a role that seems written more for some uber-tramp party girl like Lindsey Lohan, Alba does her best to class the role up, even though much of the movie is written at a hormonal, high school sophomore level of humor. You know, where women only exist to act the way a horny teenage boy wants them to, and everyone thinks fart jokes and fat jokes are the entertainment of royalty, rather than crass, cruel and largely unfunny.

The concept is this: anyone who dates Dane Cook’s character, Charlie Logan, long enough to sleep with him, marries the next guy she meets after they break up. This ludicrous concept is not only treated far too seriously in the film, but the script has the audacity to paint Charlie as the good guy for engaging in a series of one-night stands, using women desperate to get married as sex objects. The fact that this impossible concept is carried out as a reality in the film, with possibly as many as a couple dozen women sleeping with him and ending up married shortly thereafter, is where the “male fantasy fulfillment” comes in. Never does a single woman fault him for taking advantage of them; they all tell him, “You did a good thing, Charlie.”

Yeah, right.

Charlie’s only challenge comes in the form of Alba’s character, Cam Wexler, who he meets far too early in the film to excuse all his indulgences with other women, for her to be the love of his life. All improbabilities aside, including the complete absence of real-life consequences for such behavior like paternity suits, STDs or even a few hard feelings, the movie takes on a bit of charm when Charlie and Cam are on screen together; they pull of a charm that seems genuine, and during their scenes the coarseness of the movie in general is out of sight and out of mind.

Unfortunately, it always comes back to that juvenile, sex-starved level of humor, and only manages to produce laughs because the stars in this film – unlike American Pie: Beta House – actually have talent. The DVD has a generous supply of extras, but a couple of them are cringe-inducing, focusing on the raunch content rather than the thinly drawn, but well-acted love story at the core. In the end, Good Luck Chuck is more like the original American Pie trilogy, rather than the direct-to-DVD dreck that followed.

Although crass, rude and crude at times, the original American Pie trilogy, concluding with American Wedding, had a redeeming quality to it: talented actors. Despite the scripts’ flaws, stars Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan ultimately proved likable and the sort of characters you want to root for. Masquerading as a crude-and-rude comedy, the original American Pie trilogy was ultimately a somewhat twisted, but ultimately good-hearted love story about how those two characters found each other.

Since then, the series has gone south. Way south. Long gone are the classic gang that included such up and coming stars as Chris Klein, Eddie Kay Thomas, Sean William Scott, Shannon Elizabeth, Menu Suvari, Tara Reid and Natasha Leonne. In fact, the only star desperate enough to still be found in each and every American Pie is Eugene Levy – Lord knows why.

Instead, the cast of American Pie: Beta House reads more like a list of one-hit wonder bands; you keep on asking, “Who?” It’s no surprise that even behind the camera, original writer Adam Herz and co-directors Paul and Chris Weitz are also long-gone. The “big star” in Beta House is supposed to be Steve Talley as Dwight Stiffler; here’s some of Talley’s co-stars… stop me if you’ve heard of any of them, or expect to in the future: John White, Jake Siegel, Meghan Heffern, Pilar Cazares, Joe Eigo, Nick Nicotera, Christine Barger, Jonathan Keltz, Angela Besharah, Tyrone Savage, Jaclyn A. Smith, and Robbie Amell.

And of course, then there’s Eugene Levy, who’s still playing “Jim’s dad” even though Jim is nowhere to be found. Someone buy the poor man a meal so he can stop flogging his career into obscurity in this sad series, OK? The man’s an SCTV alum. A relative needs power of attorney over him to choose better movies for him; did Christopher Guest stop making independent comedies where Levy could hang out with Parker Posey? The writer’s strike is over, people, rescue your fallen comrade!

Of course, the female members of this cast of never-will-be actresses are more than willing to go nude to extend their 15 seconds of fame to a minute or two, which is unfortunate, since their sacrifice will go mostly unnoticed in this filmed radioactive waste.

American Pie: Beta House is the latest in a series of three direct-to-DVD chapters in the destruction of this series’ reputation. The crimes began with American Pie Presents: Band Camp, continued with American Pie: The Naked Mile and, unfortunately, doesn’t seem likely to conclude with American Pie: Beta House. The series has become a brand name, much like National Lampoon, except, well… most of the National Lampoon movies were somewhat funny, at least when Chevy Chase was still starring in them.

American Pie: Beta House has plenty of DVD extras; the only downside is most of them are too embarrassing to play with your wife or girlfriend in the same room… or even alone. What started out, in the Biggs-Hannigan trilogy, as an edgy sex comedy with a good heart under a lot of filth has been transformed into a worse pile of filth, but the heart already removed and transplanted in some other poor soul who at least has a fighting chance to live. Lowest recommendation possible. Lose this one in the audio racks.