Sex Drive

With the success of American Pie in 1999, the US teen movie was revitalised, but the cycle of films it ushered in was marked by dumb comedy and sick jock-foolery.

A quick glance at Sex Drive and it looks like another post-Pie identikit film loaded with buddies and boobs. But whereas many teen movies since 2000 have been inspired by tediously frattish Porky's-style comedy, Sex Drive shows the influence of John Hughes, the director of 1980s classics Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club. Thank heavens. The film isn't entirely sweet or smart and it doesn't stint on the gross-out, but like a Hughes movie its characters are well-drawn, sympathetic and likeable.

Our hero is Ian, played by Josh Zuckerman, the latest in a long line of sweet, virginal American high school boys which stretches back to Jason Biggs in American Pie and Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club.

Ian's relationship with his brother Rex (James Marsden) is much the same as that between the two Donnelly boys in the Hughes scripted Weird Science. Beyond that, the main relationships in Sex Drive are between Ian and his best friends Lance (Clark Duke), a self-confident Lothario, and Felicia (Amanda Crew), who gives the impression of being a tough individualist but can't help but fancy Lance.

So consistently humiliated is our virgin hero that, since they're nearing the end of high school, Lance determines to sort his friend out. Ian's best chance of popping his cherry, it seems, is an internet girlfriend who goes by the name Ms Tasty (Katrina Bowden). Despite Ian's internet persona being based on a lie, a date is somehow organised, and Lance convinces Ian to steal his bullying brother's beloved Pontiac GTO to drive from their home near Chicago, all the way to Knoxville, Tennessee.

As Felicia ends up joining them, their three-way relationship is explored on the long drive, with Lance explaining "she's always cock-blocking you" ("She doesn't even have a..." "Okay, twot-blocking") and Felicia agonising over her feelings for Lance when he treats her as a "wing man" and cops off with an Amish girl (seriously).

The tone can be crass but the characters shine through. The main theme is the perennial question of whether "girls want a nice guy who's going to treat them well" when they always seem to go for the cocky bad boys, here exemplified by Lance. Presumably to make the point that it's all about attitude, Lance is played by Clark Duke (a 23-year-old teen), an actor who is chubby, hardly handsome, has the signs of a receding hairline and comes across here as slightly camp.

Along the way there's two live-action Beavis and Butthead types ("Our dicks are huge!" "Yeah, you can see them from outer space!"), a dodgy hitcher and a sarcastic Amish mechanic (Green). There's even time for a freakish donut costume. (Ian works at an outlet that sells such delicious sounding fodder as "guacamole donuts" - the film is full of nicely observed touches like that). There's a crude but shockingly funny scrotum cameo, a fairly predictable turn of events for Rex, a jaunt to jail and even some gunplay. But most importantly, Sex Drive is frequently hilarious.