The quest of a horny young male to lose his virginity by the end of a two-hour film is nothing new. In the last decade, American Pie"" and ""Superbad"" both did fresh takes on that concept. Mix that with early-to-mid 1980's films ""Fast Times at Ridgemont High"" and ""No Sure Thing,"" or even 2004's ""Eurotrip"" (meeting online, long road trip to reach sex with hot blonde), and you've got the central premise of director Sean Anders' ""Sex Drive."" It's an easy formula that is usually served with a side of revolting gross-out jokes, but, surprisingly enough, ""Sex Drive"" makes the effort to include likable characters and a touch of heart, resulting in a movie that, despite absurdity and predictability, succeeds as a teen sex comedy for the YouTube generation.
Our hero is 18-year-old Ian (Josh Zuckerman), who is sick of being teased by his peers and doesn't want to go to college (University of Wisconsin, specifically) a virgin. He meets a Badger hottie on Facebook (by the name of Ms. Tasty) who lives in Tennessee. With a name like Ms. Tasty, it isn't long before she proposes to ""go all the way for him"" if he drives all the way for her.
Ian takes his brother's (James Marsden) car, bringing along awkward-looking but sexually confident Lance (Clark Duke) and best friend Felicia (Amanda Crew). The triangle is like this: Ian totally likes Felicia, but she likes Lance, but Lance isn't into her and would never do that to Ian. Deep down, Felicia likes Ian but is scared to ruin the friendship. Got it? The road trip is set in motion.
Suspending belief is essential. Perhaps because Anders knows he's working with a time-old formula, he makes the decision to go 10 steps too far. At times, the gross-out jokes are so revolting, it's almost gleeful. The bumps along the road in Middle America are predictable, the relationships equally so, but the actors make the central characters likable and believable.
Duke as Lance makes for an unlikely lady-killer, which shows that maybe the teen comedy genre has grown up and realizes sexual values aren't all based on looks. Crew and Zuckerman are cute, sympathetic characters, eye-candy Marsden is hilariously over-the-top as Ian's muscled, raging and homophobic brother. Seth Green plays a passive-aggressive Amish car mechanic, who would be funny if one didn't feel that the writers were so self-congratulatory in writing it (""You know what's funny? The Amish! Let's make fun of the Amish!"").
The film isn't without the obvious flaws, and won't likely impress anyone outside the 16 to 24 age demographic. But for its genre, it's a fun ride and an improvement on the teen sex comedy.
Grade: B
