L'Auberge Espagnole is a fun movie, especially for anyone who feels the Fernweh of nostalgia for a real or imagined experience living abroad. Yes, it's a piece of fluff, "Friends" on the Mediterranean. It makes Europe seem like a sexual backwater where non means oui and lesbianism exists to provide kicks for straight guys. And it relies on national stereotypes in place of real characterization even as it slams the boors who believe them. (It pigeonholes Americans as dumb but sexy, a summary that puzzled me but makes more sense the more I think about (a) the average American kid with a Eurailpass and (b) American foreign policy.)
Yet in the day of so-called "reality" shows about tribes of horny 20-somethings living in a goldfish bowl, L'Auberge Espagnole seems real and honest by comparison. It is believable as a love letter to Barcelona, perhaps more so than others I've seen (Barcelona, Gaudi Afternoon). Even its hokey Eurovisionesque "We are the European Union" ending is no worse in its attempt to wrap up a generation in a tidy celluloid bow than, say, the ending of American Graffiti.
So don't think about it too much. Go with a europhile friend and afterward trade stories over a glass of something imported about your own Wanderjahr abroad.