On Screen

The filthy teen-sex comedy is a staple of American cinema, with each
generation producing a signature romp in which rules are broken, booze
consumed, and virginity conquered, often on a timeline. From The
Last American Virgin to American Pie to the mighty
triumvirate that is Porky’s, these films obsess over the
mechanics of sex with equal parts hunger and revulsion. To become a
true generational sex comedy, a film must best its predecessors, a task
typically accomplished through ever-increasing explicitness. For Sex
Drive, 2008’s attempt to fill the Porky’s-shaped hole in
America’s heart, this means trumping the gross-out humiliations and
bluntly filthy shock-talk of Superbad, a spoof of a teen-sex
comedy so knowing it worked as a teen-sex comedy.

With the first task—sexual humiliation and
ickiness—Sex Drive succeeds, topping Superbad‘s
menstrual vandalism with extended exposure of elderly genitalia and the
most unfortunate euphemistic use of “rolling brownout” in history. But
there’s no beating Superbad‘s point-blank
potty-mouthedness—thanks primarily to Jonah Hill, America’s best
white cusser—and Sex Drive attains its necessary shock by
cramming its filth into the mouths of babes. Where Superbad‘s
edgiest moments were assigned to young adults, Sex Drive is all
about kids who actually look like kids, and hearing them comfortably
riff on pure filth is funny in that making-a-toddler-say-fuck kind of
way.

By far the film’s most distinctive element is the casting of the
teenage pussy master, typically portrayed by a studly pinup of the
Rob-Lowe-in-1985 variety. In an inspired move, Sex Drive‘s
teenybopper cocksman is played by a schlub—Clark Duke, a doughy,
cute young actor whose dorky exterior only makes his sexual cockiness
that much funnier. As the film makes its way through its preordained
paces—cussing babies take a virginity-vanquishing road trip,
trouble ensues—Duke’s studly schlub manages to keep the
proceedings mildly fresh. If a mildly fresh teen-sex comedy is what
you’re after, here it is.