Sex Drive' crashes and burns in attempt at crude teen comedy

                The teenage sex comedy has seen many incarnations: "American Pie" (1999) told us it felt "like warm apple pie," "Superbad" (2007) warned us to be careful with a fake I.D. and "Knocked Up" (2007) gave stoners and slackers everywhere the hope that they could get with Katherine Heigl one day. "Sex Drive" serves up several hot topics concerning sex, but sadly none give rise to anything especially enjoyable.
    The film stars Josh Zuckerman as Ian, a teenager who (tragically) hasn't "gotten any" yet. He works at a doughnut shop in the mall and obsesses over women all the time (talk about a stereotype). Ian's brother Rex (played by James Marsden) is a typical jock, pain-in-the-you-know-what sibling who picks on him. When Ian creates a fake profile on a social networking type Web site, he finds "Ms. Tasty," a supposed cyber beauty who wants to meet him, thinking he is a large, muscular football player. When Ms. Tasty invites Ian to drive down in his (actually Rex's) Pontiac GTO to have sex with her, he jumps at the opportunity, and invites his friends Lance (Clark Duke from ABC Family's "Greek") and Felicia (Amanda Crew) to join him.
    The rest of the film follows the crew across the country, showing the audience the various shenanigans that can result from a road trip involving encounters with a hobo (cameo by David Koechner), redneck families and an Amish village. While these scenes are enjoyable, they lack sincerity, feeling and any chance for the audience to relate to the characters. The only things keeping the film going are the selfish, uninteresting desire of Ian to get it on and Felicia's dilemma of whether or not she is in love with one of her best friends.
    Though it shouldn't come as any surprise, the film is extremely crude. Whenever Marsden's character is on the screen, every other phrase out of his mouth is a gay joke. Of course this provides some laughs in the end when the tables turn, but it can be quite annoying and degrading for the audience. The only actual sex scene in the film is quite unexpected, and it involves one of the characters running through a cornfield naked and chained to a bed frame.
    The shining light of the movie is Seth Green's character Ezekiel, an Amish man with a strange sense of humor and sarcasm. He provides a lot of comic relief and saves this movie from being a complete disaster. The whole Amish sequence is unusual: The three friends stumble upon the farm right at the time of Rumspringa, a time when some Amish teens are allowed to go wild and then decide if they want to permanently change their lifestyle or commit to living by Amish rules and customs. Also, Fall Out Boy just happens to be performing for one of their celebrations.
    The movie has its little twists and turns. Each segment has its own gag, and sometimes they carry over throughout the whole movie. The acting is less than superb, but who would expect it to be anything else? The soundtrack tries to make the film appealing by putting MGMT's single "Time to Pretend" in the trailers and the film, but is otherwise nothing special.
    Unfortunately, for every good teenage sex comedy, there is a bad one (or two) to spoil the fun and give the whole genre a bad rap. "Sex Drive" isn't great, but it isn't extremely terrible either. Then again, most people who like this film also enjoyed the box-office disaster "College" (2008). With this latest flop, it is becoming increasingly clear that there's more to good teen comedies than just gross-out humor and sex jokes.