Spritztour

I couldn't bash "Sex Drive" in good faith. For a comedy of its type, and all of you know what I mean by this coming of age sort of comedy, it had a lot of slow parts that weren't funny, and needless sentimentality that only served to slow the movie down. However, when it was funny, it was super funny.

The ongoing gags were pretty notable, and performances were top notch, notably by Seth Green as the sarcastic Amish guy. This may reign as best sarcastic performance in any movie, ever. The energy between the various performers was right and helped execute most of the gags effectively. As I mentioned, I have complaints, but they are trivial. If you want some goofy humor to eat popcorn to, give it a shot.

This is set in modern times near Chicago and is a raunchy teenage comedy about a nerdy 18-year-old boy determined to lose his virginity. His adventures on a weekend trip to Tennessee include some Old Order Amish, which is why I watched the film.

Ian Lafferty (Josh Zuckerman) is a sincere kid who is bullied by his older brother, Rex (James Marsden), who mocks Ian's sexuality. Ian's best friends are Felicia (Amanda Crew) and Lance (Clark Duke). Ian would like a romantic/sexual relationship with Felicia, but she is interested in Lance. Lance is a confident operator who seems to be able to manage any situation, especially with girls.

Ian has developed an Internet relationship with Ms. Tasty, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He portrays himself as a major football player with a hot 1969 GTO (that actually belongs to Rex).

The movie follows the experiences of Ian, Lance, and Felicia after they steal Rex's car and head to Nashville "to visit grandma," as the guys tell Felicia. There is much crude language related to sex and other bodily functions, combined with flashes of skin along the way mixed with various adventures. One major event unfolds when the car breaks down, and a helpful Old Order Amishman, Ezekiel (Seth Green), offers to help and takes their car back to the Amish community where he has an auto repair and body shop. It appears Ezekiel spent a few years in Rumspringa. While there, they attend a wild Saturday-night rock concert in the community. Lance falls in love with an oversexed Amish girl named Mary (Alice Graczyn).

When they finally reach Nashville, they discover Ms. Tasty (Katrina Bowden) is not what she seemed on the Internet, and everyone ends up in jail overnight until bailed out by Mary, the Amish girl. Everything resolves properly at the end.

"Sex Drive" is R-rated for a reason -- mostly vulgar language and some sexuality. It was actually funnier than I expected. I imagine 16-year-old boys in 2008 loved it. One feels a bit like a teenager watching it.

The Amish portrayals, of course, have no connection to reality. There are buggies and plain clothes, but Mary's hair spills down to her waist. There are references to Rumspringa and shunning, but that's about the extent of cultural acknowledgment.

Okay, so, Sex Drive: It's rude, it's certainly crude, but is it actually in any way good? That's the question that faces many teenage comedies of similar nature these days; so very often over the past decade, the answer unfortunately has been a resounding and overwhelming 'no', but there always remains a select few reminders that even the dumbest of comedies can still thrive upon just that. Sex Drive is thankfully one of these films. It's outrageous and ridiculous in its portrayal of teenage romance, filled with characters that speak more broadly as caricature than real, definable human beings, but it all works –for the most part- in the favour of its silly, edgy routine. Sure enough, it's a film that is far more likely to put a smile on the younger faces of the audience, but that assessment goes without saying; in short, there's some good fun to be had here, but only if you don't mind the gross-out variants of humour and can appreciate the comedy on its own merits. Expect anything more than that, and you'll be disappointed.

For all intents and purposes, Sex Drive rarely ever strays far from the road of teenage rom-coms. Taking place for the most part on the open road where many comedians make brief cameo appearances as wacky characters that bump into the main cast, the narrative that binds Sex Drive's gags together is something that has been done to death. In this vein, the movie can get tiresome—and at 110 minutes long, the biggest flaw becomes the sometimes meandering, directionless pace of which moves the plot along. Sure enough such sprawling pit-stops are usually followed by a series of great, laugh out loud bursts of humour, but this incessant need to fill up space needlessly makes Sex Drive feel like a much longer drive than it actually is.

That being said, despite the formulated, familiar approach to this road trip story, Anders and Morris do well to capitalise on the stronger elements of such a narrative. The cameos never feel redundant and fabricated; the trip itself gives way to some great comical situations; and characters, believe it or not, actually grow (albeit, very slowly) over the course of the journey. Furthermore, behind all the profane, raunchy sex jokes and slapstick lies a straight forward, but nevertheless engaging unrequited love story that doesn't feel tacked on and as derivative as it plays out on page. It's a romance that never quite takes off, but with decent characterisation and performances from those involved, it's enough to give the story a warm core that pays out with an ending befitting of your average genre movie.

To watch a movie like Sex Drive for the romance however, is a bit like eating a hot dog for the bun; the real drawing power and force of conviction that draws you into the surreal, ridiculous world displayed here is through the characters, and the awkward, downright hilarious jams they get themselves into. For the most part, the movie strikes gold most when the comedy is just that—character driven—and it's always fun to watch lead character Ian (Josh Zuckerman) constantly get into uncomfortable, cringe-inducing moments of embarrassment.

Of course, a lot of such moments succeed primarily upon the clever, rat-a-tat, teenage colloquial dialogue that Anders and Morris accentuate through their script, but a lot of it also comes down to the performances of the cast who bring their characters to life vividly and with shades of naturalism that brings out the script's modern, laid back feel. As a result, Sex Drive all the more feels casual, and while this again reinforces the slack attitude devoted to the meandering pacing, such a style works well to give the movie a personality of its own that reflects its characters.

In the end, although I had some qualms with the movie's runtime, and it's sometimes unfocused approach to narrative, I nevertheless had fun with what Sean Anders delivers here. It's a relentlessly convincing picture with a youthful vision that many directors so often forget or simply neglect to touch upon when making such movies. As a result, Sex Drive will undoubtedly speak a lot clearer to younger audience members than their older counterparts, but if you happen to be a part of that demographic, then there is definitely some great laughs to be had here; unabashedly immature and not afraid to get dirty, Sex Drive is a long ride, but it's worth it in the end for the fun that it expels over that trip.

• A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)

I loved every minute of this movie!! If you are looking for a non-stop constantly-falling-out-of-your-seat film, then Sex Drive is perfect for you. It is an instant teen comedy classic, in my books. James Mardsen and Seth Green steals the show but up and coming actors: Josh Zuckerman and Clark Duke did extremely well for themselves and prove themselves to be the next big thing in the future. It is just about as funny than Superbad and American Pie (1,2,3) and the plot of the movie was just so simple and well-made. Hopefully, Sex Drive will be a teen classic in the next few years because it's extremely funny, raunchy & has a little bit of it's sweet side, too. Sex Drive is awesome and super hilarious!!!

I saw Sex Drive at a sneak preview presented by my university. It's a seemingly typical teen sex comedy in the vein of Superbad meets Road Trip. Zuckerman plays Ian, a young virgin with no luck with the ladies, a crush on his childhood friend Felicia (Crew), a jerk of an older brother (Marsden), and is best friends with an Austin Powers-esquire Casanova by the name of Lance (Duke). On the internet, he poses as a football player while courting a mysterious girl online. When the girl invites him to go "all the way", he steals his brother's GTO and heads to Knoxville with Felicia and Lance. Ian's character has the usual nerdy teen virgin-in-a-movie problems: falls for the wrong girls, takes few risks, gets caught in embarrassing sexual situations. On the road trip, they run into a series of hilarious, awkward, and weird situations. And on the way, they discover that sex isn't the most important thing, and that true love can be found in both odd and familiar places.

It's not exactly stunningly original, but it's still a hilarious film. The three leads do a pretty good job, Lance being a particularly funny character. Marsden and Green steal the show in all the scenes they're in, and all of the characters in the film are interesting, even if most of them are stock characters. The script is also well-connected, with most of the characters being connected to the larger plot, and combines wit, ribaldry, and straight adult humor well. Every gag sequence gets big laughs, and the comedy never slows down or dies out. The internet cut-aways are especially hilarious supplements.

It's refreshing to see a genuinely adult comedy not coming from the Apatow crew or McKay and Ferrell. Although it lacks star leads and filmmakers and will probably drop under the radar, I definitely recommend Sex Drive to anyone looking for a big laughs.