Genre: Comedy/Romance
Director: Sean Anders
Cast: James Marsden, Josh Zuckerman, Amanda Crew, Katrina Bowden, Seth Green, Clark Duke
RunTime: 1 hr 51 mins
Released By: Shaw
Rating: M18 (Nudity and Sexual Scenes)
Official Website: http://www.sexdrivethemovie.com/

Opening Day: 4 December 2008

Synopsis:

Eighteen-year-old Ian Lafferty sets out on a cross-country drive with best friends, Lance and Felicia, in order to lost his virginity to a red-hot babe he met online. But the journey, filled with hilarious misadventures and raunchy escapades, turns out to be a life-changing experience when everything Lafferty thinks he knows about life is turned upside down. Raunchy, raucous and unexpectedly romantic, Sex Drive follows three teenagers on the road trip of a lifetime.

Movie Review:

Think Road Trip meets American Pie and you’ll have some idea where this Drive is headed. So be forewarned, if you do not like your jokes crude, offensive or vulgar, mostly of human reproductive and/or excretory functions, then don’t bother signing up for the ride.

Otherwise, you’ll find this raunchy comedy a guilty pleasure, its appeal limited almost exclusively to your baser instincts. To be sure, its main character Ian seems awfully similar to Jim Levenstein from the American Pie series. Both are the kind of nice, sweet teenage guys that can sadly only dream of getting laid, as proven by a hilarious opening sequence.

Well, American Pie was almost ten years back. Fast forward ten years later, and you have the beauty of Internet dating. Through the powers of Instant Messaging (IM), Ian has hooked up with a gal online who goes by the moniker Ms Tasty. Ms Tasty is quite the bombshell, if you (like Ian) believe the photos that she has sent over.

So, one wet dream and countless other daytime fascinations later, Ian is finally goaded to steal his aggressively abusive brother Rex’s GTO and drive 500 miles to meet the gal who claims she will go “all the way for him”. Turns out that Ian is also actually in love with his best girl friend, Felicia (Amanda Crew), but unfortunately for him, she is enamoured with his other best guy friend, Lance (Clark Duke).

All three of them embark on a road trip from Chicago to Knoxville so Ian can have a chance at getting laid with Ms Tasty. Of course, there will be many hijinks along the way, courtesy of perpetually horny Lance. Take for instance, one uproarious chase sequence that sees Lance running butt naked through fields of corn after jealous husband finds Lance shagging his wife.

There will also be many interesting characters that they will meet along the way, including a spurned hitchhiker (David Koechner) and an oddly sarcastic Amish auto mechanic (Seth Green). The latter is a scene-stealer, taking much glee in confusing Ian by vacillating between helping him repair his car for free and urging payment in the form of chores around the community.

Yet one reason American Pie became the teenage cultural phenomenon it did was because apart from its many randy jokes, it had plenty of heart- something which seems missing in this Drive. Indeed, for a comedy that wants its audience to connect with its sweet nice guy lead Ian, the story spends surprisingly very little time letting us get to know Ian better.

Instead, it is content to rely on him as the stereotypical nice guy to play on the audience’s sympathies. Unfortunately, Josh Zuckerman as Ian lacks some of Jason Biggs’ goofy appeal in American Pie, such that most of the time you’ll laugh with him (or maybe even at him), but you probably won’t feel very much for him.

To his credit, director Sean Anders does keep things moving briskly, so at no point do you feel that this Drive has run out of gas. Also, he adds in many nice touches here and there, like unexpected cutaways that suffice to say should warn you of how quickly embarrassing moments can end up on the Internet these days.

On the whole, this Drive proves to be quite an enjoyable and amusing ride after all. It drops all pretensions of being politically correct, forgoes any niceties and revels simply in hitting below the belt. After all, shouldn’t its cheeky title already give you a clue what to expect? And yes, it’s meant to be a pun.

Movie Rating:



(If you like the taste of American Pie, you’ll find plenty of mileage in this Drive)

Review by Gabriel Chong