Sex Drive (2008)

In the '80s, if you went to see a jovial piece of horndogus comedicus like Losin' It or License to Drive, it was product, pure and simple. In our era, films like Road Trip or the new Sex Drive filter their leering, gross-out, smash-and-grab antics through a scrim of nostalgia. You're no longer just watching raunchy teen trash — you're watching an affectionate homage to the raunchy teen trash of yesteryear. What is new is the way that Internet culture has ratcheted up the shock value. When Ian (Josh Zuckerman), a virgin who thinks he’s met the online hookup of his dreams, jumps into his brother’s 1969 GTO to drive from Chicago to Knoxville, he and his pals — Felicia (Amanda Crew), whom he secretly adores, and Lance (Clark Duke), who adores himself — undergo a set of escapades that run from the sleazy to the sick.

Lance, played with a spew of attitude by newcomer Duke (who could be a baby member of Weezer), finds a few girls of his own, one with a scatological fetish. The sheer pileup of boner gags and the use of a certain three-letter gay slur — I don't even like printing the word, but it's now woefully routine in youth comedy — is relentless. Yet Sex Drive twits its own lost innocence with a knowing backward glance (the winsome leads deserve a more humane movie), and Seth Green is uproarious as an Amish farmer who speaks in sentences so passive-aggressive, they're like tiny slaps. B–

You Might Also Like

• Movie News Mix 'N' Match Q&A with Clark Duke (Oct 17, 2008) | Jennifer Armstrong
• Fall Movie Preview: Video Seth Green's 'Sex Drive'
• ENTERTAINERS OF THE YEAR 'Sex and the City' women: Entertainer of the year (May 30, 2008) | Missy Schwartz
• Movie News Puppy Love (Dec 25, 2008) | Leah Greenblatt