Sex Ed

Okay, so it's not very original, but the director clearly stole the premise of School of Rock which happens to be a favorite of mine since I am a guitar player of 28 years. The best way I can put this movie into perspective is that it is School of Rock with rock and roll replaced by sex education. The kids were great, Hayley Joel Osmant was great, the supporting adults were great, just a great movie. I gave it 7/10 but that's a really strong 7/10. I rarely write reviews...mainly because I suck at writing them, but this is a good movie and don't believe the naysayers. I was thoroughly entertained and it was also fascinating to see HJO in a role other than the "creepy-kid". Best movie ever?.....certainly not. Boring?.....certainly not. Give it a chance. I loved it and the bad reviews are just snobby know-it-alls.

Let's get this out of the way first: yes, Haley Joel Osment looks-wise isn't the kid who sees dead people or even his 16-year old self in the wonderful "Secondhand Lions". He's chunky (and could use a good haircut), but damn! is he a really good actor.

He carries this movie, he makes what could be a one-note or creepy character come alive. It helps that he has a terrific script to work with, it could easily have turned preachy fast but except for a scene near the end, it's more about Ed, HJO's character, and his lack of self- esteem, awkwardness around women, career frustrations and so on.

The rest of the cast is really good as well, especially Lorrenza Izzo as Pilar, Retta as bar owner/landlord Sydney, Matt Walsh as the school administrator Washout and young Isaac White as Leon. The rest of the cast is fine as well, even in the small parts. It's well directed and filmed and the score is full of toe-tappers. Special note should be made of the band that plays in Sydney's bar, what terrific musicians.

If you take this movie for what it is --a low-key, low budget comedy with some points to make-- it's a nice way to spend 90 minutes.

I hated that HJO guy when he was a child actor. I couldn't stand his petulant facial expression and his wooden acting. But I love the guy as an adult underdog.

Look, in the secular world this character is a loser. No motivational psychobabble can change that fact. You should be having sex if you are secular, and if you can't get any, you've got a real problem. It deserves sympathy, but it is embarrassing.

If you're religious however, you have a good justification for remaining a virgin, and you don't have to apologize to anyone for it. But this guy seems to have been secular.

We see this large black lady giving him excellent life advice throughout, but we never hear her back story. How did she get so wise? Although her advice was on point, it was super awkward having her dispense it without any background. Also, guys don't want advice about how to be a man, from a woman.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to hear underage kids talking about sex in a movie. Forget that. I don't even know how they did it legally. It ruined it for me.

There are no really funny scenes. I don't want to see someone vomit on screen. That's such a cheap gross-out 80's rip-off. I would have liked to see much more photography of the Tampa Bay area. They hardly even utilized their surroundings.

How could a guy pay for an apartment and have a life based on one after school class? Were those kids on "detention" throughout the movie, because he had the same kids in the class all the way through. They originally said they were on detention.

The best part of the movie was the main character's male best friend. He was a funny guy who reminded me of a young Aaron Eckhart. The wise-cracking black kid was a cheap ploy. What a cliché. It fell flat.

The real message here was that alpha-males get the girls, because confidence is the main thing that attracts women to men. It's that simple.

It's nice that they included a Reverend's point of view, and his was the one that I made at the beginning of this review. I think they treated a religious figure with respect here. Even if the message of the film was the opposite of his.

Well, I made it through, and I give HJO the credit for that, because he was an underdog worth rooting for. Otherwise, this one lacked background and laughs, and needed a clearer message.

I actually thought that the movie would be more toilet humor-orientated. It was what I saw from the trailer - jokes about genitals, image of the outsider protagonist having difficulties with talking to ladies and his successful friend being almighty alpha male.

But the movie itself is about something different. It focuses on other, more philosophic topics - what makes man a man and what makes life worth living. It depicts the process of growing up as a person, some good patterns of behaving yourself with the person you like and why does it matter to protect your point of view.

However, the humour part is still good. If toilet jokes are OK to you, some gags will definitely make you burst out laughing.

All in all, "Sex Ed" may not be the movie that the trailer shows, but it doesn't make it any worse. Such kind, melodramatic comedy, in reality, is a good way to spend an evening with your friends and/or your fiancé, if toilet jokes and topics are OK to them.

This was a really awkward movie, but I liked it. I guess it's because it's a secular movie that strives away from the secular mentality. If that makes any sense. Sure some viewers might bash the heck out of this, pointing their fingers at how much of a loser the protagonist who is a sex ed teacher played by Haley Joel Osment is. But I was personally rooting for the underdog, because he is the few that had that sense of moral code that is actually quite rare now a days. We now live in a time where if you are a virgin you are labeled as a loser. But this movie tries to show that it's okay to wait for the right person. Even if it's done in a very awkward fashion. I am sure the viewers that were once a very very nice guy that wasn't getting any can relate to this movie to a degree (which is quite a lot). If that is your choice that is your choice. This movie didn't seem to have a clear cut message, but that was one of the points it was trying to make and I kinda respect that. Now I personally like Haley Joel Osment as an actor, he isn't the cute kid he was in his younger years but he knows how to utilize what he has now and I respect that as well. I personally watched this movie because of Haley Joel Osment and actually enjoyed it. It's not a hilarious in your face comedy but it was kind of endearing. Looking at the title and it being labeled as a comedy I thought it would be super crude it's actually not so much. And I liked how it didn't rely on a ton of crude stuff to get some laughs out of the audiences.

6.5/10