It follows a formula too much and very few scenes in this movie (about a high school valedictorian trying to become more sexually experienced before she goes to college) are really funny, but in its female-version-of-Porkies way it stumbles onto some real truths about young love/sex and how different it is for boys and girls.
What Works: The best thing in it is Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza playing against type as the lead heroine, an overachiever in Boise, Idaho (talk about a curveball location!) who treats sex as one more course to be mastered. Her darting, slightly-dangerous eyes can make her look sexy, cerebral, and unhinged in the very same moment. This actress is often heralded as a “star of tomorrow” and if she keeps being the best thing in an otherwise so-so movie (as she was in Safety Not Guaranteed as well) then I think that’s a label well-earned. Also, even if the film is light on true comedy——most of the gags feel forced or telegraphed a mile away——it does contain real insight into the ways boys and girls process sex and feelings differently. What do I mean? It’s interesting that in most male horn dog movies (like American Pie) the boys start out treating women like sex objects and only caring about getting off, then gradually learn a lesson and see them as people. In this film, Aubrey Plaza starts out thinking sex is more meaningful than it winds up being.
What Doesn’t Work: It’s a B-movie at best, and a lot of the gags simply don’t work. For every time Plaza floored me with an off-the-cuff moment, there’s two times where we’re stuck with some douche-bag (usually Bill Hader) who doesn’t seamlessly fit into the plot. It’s probably a mistake to let characters like Hader or Clark Gregg (playing Plaza’s dad as if we didn’t see all this before with Jim Levy in American Pie) get as much screen-time as more essential characters like Plaza’s friend who wants to be more. Plus, why set this movie in 1993? Nothing is gained or added from the period setting, so why have it at all?
What I Would Have Done Differently: Avoided some of the more obvious gags (every time Clark Gregg walks in on one of his daughters having sex…this joke got old when the American Pie films ran it into the ground), cut Hader’s screen time, maybe let Rachel Bilson’s character do something interesting, and set the film in the present day. They don’t get much mileage out of 90’s jokes, plus a lot of the sexual terms they come up with weren’t really big back then so it makes it needlessly anachronistic.