Review of Sex Drive (2008) by Timothy S — 02 Feb 2012

Thanks to some recent successes, the R-rated sex comedy has earned a resurgence not seen since the sub-genre had its breakthrough in the early 1980's thanks to films like "Porky's" and the like. The latest dim bulb is the allegedly cleverly titled "Sex Drive", and it's only marginally better than the ugly "College" from a few months ago.

What nobody really stopped to consider, I think, is that most of those films from the early '80's were pretty horrible and don't deserve to have homage paid to them. But these new films all try to show their romantic side to balance out all of the raunchy humor, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. With this film, the romantic sub-plot is really all the film has going for it.

The jokes aren't successful most of the time, and even though we're still deep into the computer age, the plot that has the horny geek driving across the country to hook up with a chick he met online seems horribly dated. Newcomers Josh Zuckerman is a likable fresh face who makes the most of his stock nerd character, and Amanda Crew is very appealing in her first major film role as his reluctant love interest. They make a very watchable couple, but the film's best comedic performance comes from Seth Green in a cameo role as a sarcastic Amish auto mechanic. He's so great that with an expanded role I might have been able to look past all of the gay slurs and boner jokes.

But as it stands, I was shocked simply because I didn't despite "Sex Drive", but there's no way I can recommend it. Long live the '80's!