I don’t know what I expected when I got into this one. It’s a real pain for me to try to evaluate it, since the general message of the movie is one I’m passionate about. I’m very much in favor of sex ed. I have a lot of contempt for groups that try to stifle sexual information, or those that try to turn it into a religious education process. The problem is that this movie just isn’t that good. It’s not terrible, but there are so many problems with it that it’s hard to ignore them to get to the positive core.
First, the movie stars Haley Joel Osment. He does fine with the material he has, but he projects a decent, but entirely milquetoast personality. It doesn’t help that the story has him taking constant missteps for most of the movie, and being completely delusional about them.
There’s a supporting cast of wacky characters. Most of these scenes are written to have casual talk between them with comic material. This sort of thing reminds me of Clerks, where there’s no real content, but it’s about entertaining the audience with something vaguely crude.
Man, I sound like some sort of codger.
I didn’t find this offensive or distasteful. It just seemed like it would have helped if these bits contributed to the plot in some way. When they exist to give a colorful supporting character some comic moments, even that’s acceptable. But it happens with all of the supporting cast. It feels like more than half of the movie is taken up with conversations that don’t move the plot forward, and just seem like a spotlight for “look at these wacky characters!”
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