Sean Anders, who directed and co-wrote “Sex Drive” with John Morris, deserves a high-five for this one. “Sex Drive” has a plot that I’m convinced could have been the disastrous spawn of “College Road Trip.” And yet, Anders makes it into more of the cooler older brother sort of thing. Anders frees the nerd within by using some truly inventive directing to play with and riff on the thin source material.

That said, if given the choice, I wouldn’t actually change the story that much. Ian (Josh Zuckerman) has never had a girlfriend before. Actually, more importantly, he’s never had sex before, and everybody­—from his homophobic brother, Rex (James Marsden) to his seductive best friend, Lance (Clark Duke)—knows it. But ho, sound the horns! An opportunity approaches! You see, the girl Ian’s been cyber-chatting with, Miss Tasty (Katrina Bowden), would totally do him, in a second. Ian, Lance and unwitting compatriot Felicia (Amanda Crew) steal Rex’s hot rod and rumble down the highway to Knoxville.
“Sex Drive,” ironically, doesn’t find most of its groove on the road, but in its locales, which is good, because after about five minutes, the euphoria that comes packaged with most road trips drifts away, and there has to be something more to keep the viewers faithful to the road’s containing lines. So the plot drifts off-road, and even though anything can happen to our travelers once they’re off the straight and narrow, most of what happens is actually funny.

Anders pulls all the right visual punches to keep this one churning, and Seth Green chips in the goods as the sarcastic and shamelessly Amish Ezekiel. Green is playing what is basically a one-joke character, yet the writing and acting complement each other to ironic perfection. The rest of the cast follows this mold: Clark Duke’s goofy smile makes me believe he is a ladies’ man with relationship issues; Josh Zuckerman’s wide eyes tell me he’s sadly never seen boobs before; Amanda Crew’s attitude serves as the moral buffer between the two boys, although even she is allowed to throw off her shoes every now and then.

Nobody’s perfect, but, even in Rex’s case, we aren’t expected to accept their flaws because such outbursts of empathy would distract the viewer from the characters’ quest for gettin’ some. And from Ian’s practice condom getting flung onto his poor stepmother’s hair to a shameless dildo getting stuck onto a doughnut costume, the film never forgets what its driving force is.

This is debatable, but I think the worst thing a movie can do is take itself too seriously. Unless its plot is riddled with mythical creatures and the like, any movie has the possibility of being real, and theoretically, we could all be living in real-life “movie plots” right now. Now, does that mean that movies should always present their inevitably realistic stories in realistic ways? As much as I love watching the hero from afar, I’d much rather get a well-placed camera push into the protagonist as he says, “Now, let’s get the hell out of here!” Movies are all about pushing our viewpoints closer than we’d ever feel comfortable being in real life, and “Sex Drive” gets that­—that we paid full admission to be entertained, not to watch our lives from worn-out angles.

Rating: 4/5
Directed by: Sean Anders
Starring: James Marsden, Josh Zuckerman, Clark Duke