Sex Drive: Rumo ao Sexo

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.

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 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.

In the suburb of Chicago, the eighteen year-old Ian (Josh Zuckerman) is a naive and virgin teenager that is mocked by his homophobic brother Rex (James Marsden) and his schoolmates; his best friends are Felicia (Amanda Crew) and the wolf Lance (Clark Duke). When Ian meets a girl called Tasty (Katrina Bowden) in Internet, he writes many lies about himself; when she invites him to drive to Knoxville, Tennessee, to have sex with her, Ian steals Rex's GTO Judge 1969 and travels with Lance and Felicia. When they have trouble on the road with the car, the Amish Ezekiel (Seth Green) offers to help them in his community. Lance meets the Amish Mary (Alice Greczyn) and they fall in love for each other. During their travel, Ian and Felicia discover that their feelings are more than friendship and that Tasty is not who she told she is.

I am still laughing with "Sex Drive" since this movie is one of the funniest comedies that I have recently seen. There are many gross jokes, beautiful tits and girls and enjoyable characters. The cynical Seth Green is simply hilarious in the role of a sympathetic Amish. The scene when Ian is on the stage watching the dancers backstage while a pregnant girl is telling her sad story is so funny that I needed to stop the movie just to laugh. The last scene with Amanda Crew in the end of the credits is also very funny, and I believe many people probably lost this joke. If you are intellectual, or if you do not like this type of movie, please do not spend your time to write bad reviews in IMDb. I can not understand how a viewer can be surprised with the content of a comedy that begins the way "Sex Drive" does. Amanda Crew, Katrina Bowden, Alice Greczyn and all the female cast are incredibly gorgeous. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Sex Drive"

Yes it's ridiculous. But all teen comedies are. The acting isnt top notch but which one of them is? Revisit "Animal House" and tell me every actor was up to par. People need to relax. This is a fun film. Its offensive, but even when it is the actors play it off and make us comfortable. Seth Green stole the movie with his phoned in (as it should be) performance as Ezekiel. This movie should be up there with 10 things I hate about you and I dare say American Pie, as a definitive comedy classic of a generation.