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Review: “Sex Drive”
By Kyle | October 14, 2008
Frisky business
3 stars out of 4
108 minutes Rated R (profanity, nudity, sex, raunchy humor)
Kyle Smith review of “Sex Drive”
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The title “Sex Drive” is a pun about a road trip in search of nooky, but when it comes to what it’s like to be a teen guy, it’s a particularly apt metaphor. You’re the car. The stickshift is in control.
“Sex Drive” makes an excellent case for the idea that teen embarrassment has reached the nuclear stage now that anything you do may be casually filmed by a passing witness and immediately posted on YouTube. The “permanent record” the teachers warned about is here, but it’s so much worse than that D in algebra.
Cringing under the weight of his virginity, Ian (Josh Zuckerman) is, as his older brother points out, “18 and you’ve never had sex. That’s how people get gay.” Seems reasonable to Ian. Time to panic. Also, at work Ian is required to dress as a doughnut with a mustache (mainly because a pretty girl asked him to) but a little hottie from out of state has been flirting him up on the Internet. Time for a little road trip that involves stealing his brother’s 1969 GTO (license plate: NOFATCHX) and heading from Chicagoland to Knoxville, Tenn with his two best buds, a guy and a girl.
“Sex Drive” is a filthy little low-budget sex comedy that contains perhaps more jokes about urine - fat ropy streams of it, splooshing in from every angle - than you may require, and on the surface it reminds you of a lot of other movies. But a lot of them (”American Pie” comes to mind) were completely unsurprising in their quest for shock value. This one is actually funny. It’s got an Amish rave, a talking Jean Claude Van Damme poster and a pudgy teen running maniacally through the cornfields while a) nude and b) handcuffed to a brass bed. What else can I say except that it must be seen, possibly more than once? It even has a pretty decent catchphrase: “Rumspringa!”
Ian, when he isn’t getting skull-punched by his older brother (James Marsden is in top form here) is gaping at the exploits of his buddy Lance. Lance has glasses, a moon-shaped face and a belly. Obviously he is a total chick magnet - thanks to the performance of Clark Duke, who gives Lance so much completely unearned self-esteem that he actually does seem like the kind of guy who could date about six levels above his gene pool. Check him out in the jail scene: The guy commands respect faster than Tony Montana.
Also along for the drive is Ian’s best female friend Felicia (Amanda Crew, another find) who seems to spend a disturbing amount of time having disturbingly passionate arguments with Lance as Ian watches helplessly. “Sex Drive” has shaky moments and gags that don’t work. It’s not so much edited as slammed together with rock songs.
But the reason it works surprisingly well is that the bedroom and bathroom stuff isn’t really the point; there are reconizable characters here, and a disarming innocence that is spot-on. John Hughes’ “Sixteen Candles” is to this movie’s writer-director Sean Anders what John Woo movies are to Quentin Tarantino. (A couple of horndogs who, heroically but ineptly, hit on every girl in sight seem to be based on the lurking geeks in “Candles,” one of whom was played by John Cusack). For instance, a sarcastic Amish guy played by Seth Green isn’t just there to do an obvious sight gag. You never quite know what he’s going to do next.
You could divide teen movies into those that show kids as they are and those that show them as they wish they were; “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” isn’t bad but it leans to the latter, with all involved being hip and beautiful as they flit from cool club to cool club. “Sex Drive” exaggerates in the other direction but it’s a little closer to the mark, which is: the horror, the horror.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Wow … this one looked beyond awful to me. Now, I gotta see it.
Trailers … they can deceive.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Kyle name checks John Cusack and yet fails to realize that the picture he describes sounds like an almost shot-for-shot remake of Cusack’s “The Real Thing.” I shall be kind and assume that he has never seen it.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:32 am
@ Hunter:
I have indeed seen “The Real Thing,” my favorite Tom Stoppard play, but I fear that the film you refer to is called “The Sure Thing.”
See how pedantry works both ways?
October 15th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Hunter:
Failure is calling. I see your busy can I take a message?
This movie sounds pretty funny. Is it worth the 40 bucks (2 tickets + gas + drinks and popcorn) to see in the theater?
October 15th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I’m a big fan of raunchy teen comedy escapism. My teen year regrettably were not as entertaining and seemed to be a blur of fist fights and illegal drag races…come to think of it they were pretty entertaining and in retrospect I’m not sure how I survived them.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
40 bucks? Nah, save your money.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:01 am
And the rampant homophobic slurs didn’t bother you in the least? Not even a little? Ha! Look who I’m asking. Of course it didn’t.