Sex Drive

Though it kicks off with a relatively promising opening half hour, Sex Drive‘s increasingly tedious storyline, coupled with a distinct lack of laughs, ensures that it ultimately comes off as an almost interminable endeavor. The film stars Josh Zuckerman as Ian, a dorky high schooler who, along with friends Lance (Clark Duke) and Felicia (Amanda Crew), embarks on a cross-country road trip to meet (and hopefully sleep with) a beautiful internet pen pal named Ms. Tasty. Filmmaker Sean Anders does a fairly decent job of initially drawing the viewer into the movie, with James Marsden’s hilariously over-the-top turn as Ian’s ‘roid-raging brother proving to be a highlight almost immediately. The creeping inclusion of egregiously stale elements within the proceedings slowly-but-surely renders the film’s few positive attributes moot, however, as screenwriters Anders and John Morris emphasize some of the most hackneyed plot developments imaginable – with the trajectory of Ian’s friendship with lifelong crush Felicia undoubtedly a key (and hopelessly eye-rolling) example of this. The road trip that occupies the bulk of Sex Drive‘s midsection has been infused with a whole host of entirely ineffective (and wholly unfunny) encounters and characters, which is certainly no small feat given the presence of such naturally hilarious folks as Brian Posehn and David Koechner in cameo roles. The painfully drawn-out third act, in which all the major characters (and a few others) somehow converge on the same spot, only exacerbates the film’s various problems, with the end result one of the least impressive comedies to come around in quite some time.

*1/2 out of ****